Lazarillo De Tormes

Lázaro de Tormes was born to Tomé González and Antona Pérez in a village near Salamanca. His father was in charge of the watermill on the bank of the river on which Lázaro was born. When Lázaro is eight years old, his father is caught stealing from the sacks that belong to the people who bring their crops to be milled. He is arrested and punished. While living with a gentleman away from home, which is part of his sentence, Tomé is forced to accompany his master to war, where he dies beside his master, “like a loyal servant” (5).

Lázaro’s mother decides to live among respectable people to become like them. She works as a cook and washes clothes for stable boys. Eventually she meets a Black man who tends to the horses. The man, Zaide, comes to the house frequently, and at first Lázaro is scared “because of his color and the way he looked” (6). Once Lázaro figures out that they eat better whenever the man visits, he starts to like him. When his mother gives birth to a baby boy, Lázaro calls him “a very pretty little negro that I dandled and helped to keep warm” (6). One day, Lázaro’s brother realizes he and his mother are white but that his father is not. The baby cries to his mother and calls his father a bogeyman. Lázaro wonders how many people in the world run away from things that scare them.

When Zaide’s employer learns about the interracial marriage, the employer determines that Zaide is stealing oats. Zaide gives Lázaro’s mother everything he owns to sell so that she can raise his son. The charges against Zaide lead to him and Antona being whipped with 100 lashes. Antona is barred from ever seeing Zaide again. Antona must take a demeaning job at a place called the Solana Inn, where she is “put upon all the time” (7). She manages to raise the baby and Lázaro for two more years. Lázaro runs around the inn doing favors for guests.

When a blind man arrives at the inn, he tells Antona that he would like Lázaro to lead him. She agrees. She begs the blind man to treat her son well, and the blind man assures her he will, promising to take Lázaro as his son. Lázaro and the blind man depart. When they come to a bridge, the blind man tells Lázaro to put his head against the statue of the beast that stands at the head of the bridge. Lázaro does so, and the blind man smashes Lázaro’s head against the stone. Lázaro nevertheless believes the blind man was good for him: “He gave me life, and though he was blind he revealed things to me and made me see what life was about” (8).

Lázaro observes that the blind man is cunning and astute and makes money telling pregnant vulnerable women prayers and divining their future. The blind man has memorized many prayers and sells them to make his money, offering them up for people in need of them. He makes so much money that Lázaro is impressed. But the blind man barely feeds him, and Lázaro is starving. Lázaro uses all his cunning to outwit the blind man by stealing from his wine jar. When the master realizes wine is missing from the jar, he puts the jar between his legs. But Lázaro fashions a long straw and is able to suck up the wine through the straw. Eventually, the blind man realizes that Lázaro is tricking him and beats him over the head with the wine jar. He punishes Lázaro repeatedly and publicly, and when people ask why he punishes the boy, the blind man explains how bad a boy he is. The people laugh at the blind man’s childishness. However, they also come to Lázaro’s rescue, bandaging his wounds and giving him water.

These cycles of violence continue. Lázaro manages to steal grapes and switches out a sausage for an onion, but every time he tries to steal food from the blind man, the blind man figures it out and physically punishes Lázaro. In return, Lázaro retaliates. For instance, he leads the blind man “along the worst roads on purpose to make him footsore” or walks him through stones or mud (12). The blind man also taunts Lázaro with forecasts of ill fortune. One day, as they tie their mules to a pair of horns that drivers use to secure their animals, the blind man predicts that Lázaro will marry an unfaithful woman. He grabs the horns and warns, “One day this thing that I’ve in my hand will give you an ill-deserved day’s meal” (13).

Lázaro wants to get away from the cruelty after the blind man shoves his pointy nose down Lázaro’s throat so he will throw up stolen sausage. He tells the letter recipient, “I could easily see that he had enjoyed his sadistic punishments” (11).

After the blind man assaults Lázaro in this way, the townspeople come to Lázaro’s aid again. They laugh and admonish the blind man for his abuse. Lázaro realizes he should have bitten the man’s nose off and calls himself a coward. The townspeople use the wine they had brought for the old man to clean Lázaro’s wounds. The blind man tells Lázaro he will be lucky with wine in the future since he’s managed to steal so much and have his wounds cleaned with it. Lázaro decides to leave the blind man and flees.

Lázaro ends up in a different town and is taken in by a priest. Almost immediately, Lázaro can’t believe his bad luck. The blind man was bad, but the priest is worse. He writes, “All I can say is that all the money-grubbing meanness in the world has been collected into this single reverend gentleman” (18).

The priest keeps a very old chest in which he locks the Eucharist bread. The priest gives Lázaro one onion every four days, and Lázaro figures he will die of hunger. The priest, however, gives himself meat and gravy. The bones he hands off to Lázaro. The priest keeps a watchful eye on everything. He knows exactly how many coins go into the collection box and exactly how much wine and bread there is. He boasts about his temperance in eating and drinking, but Lázaro knows he eats and drinks with impunity. Lázaro is too weak to leave; he figures his luck is so bad that he will die with the next master.

One day a tinker comes to the door. The priest is gone, so Lázaro asks the tinker to make a key to the bread box. He pays the tinker in bread, and when the priest next leaves the house, he eats a loaf of bread. When the priest notices that something is missing, he blames it on his counting. Lázaro tries not to eat the bread, but eventually he notices little holes in the box. He decides to eat the bread and suggests that mice are getting it through the holes. The priest believes Lázaro and covers the holes. Lázaro’s solution to this dilemma is to make new holes, after which he eats more bread.

The priest curses the mice. He borrows a mousetrap and puts a piece of cheese in it. Lázaro eats the cheese from the mousetrap with his bread. The priest talks to the neighbors about it, and they tell him it must be a snake, not mice. The notion of a snake doing the damage concerns the priest. He is nearly out of his mind with frustration and worry. Lázaro normally keeps the key safe under the straw he sleeps on, but now, afraid the priest will find it, he transfers the key to his mouth, where he also keeps the coins he gets from begging. One night the priest hears a whistle, and he notices the sound coming from Lázaro as he sleeps. He pulls the key out of Lázaro’s mouth and fits it into the bread chest. He realizes that Lázaro is the snake and beats him unconscious. The neighbor ladies nurse him back to health, but they also make fun of him. Two weeks later, when Lázaro is better, the priest takes him outside and tells him he should get a job. He also says that he can’t trust someone as crafty as Lázaro.

Lázaro finds himself in the city of Toledo, where he is nursed back to health by the people around him. After a while, however, they tell him to go away, saying, “You’re nothing but a scoundrel and a loafer” (27). So Lázaro walks along the road and passes a gentleman who asks if Lázaro is looking for work. Lázaro says yes, and together they wander all day through the town. They go to the cathedral and sit for mass before finally going to the gentleman’s house, where Lázaro is expecting that someone has made their meal. But looking around, he sees how barren the house is, and also that there is no food. The master tells Lázaro that he ate before they met and that Lázaro will have to wait till nighttime. Lázaro can’t believe his terrible luck. His situation has gone from bad to worse.

Lázaro stands to the side and pulls some bread he begged from his pocket. His master sees this and calls Lázaro over. He seems very interested in the bread, and when he takes some, Lázaro notices he wolfs it down as if he hasn’t eaten in a long time. After that, the gentleman fetches a jug and offers some to Lázaro, who tells the man he doesn’t drink wine. The master tells Lázaro it is water, not wine. Then he stands up and instructs Lázaro to come and learn how to make the bed. Lázaro notices the mattress is thin and that the man uses his breeches to make a pillow. The gentleman then tells Lázaro that it’s too late to go to the market. He reminds Lázaro about the thieves and the danger at night. Lázaro pretends nothing is wrong and goes to bed starving.

The next morning Lázaro acts as the man’s valet. The man tells Lázaro that his sword is a very fine weapon and he would never sell it. As they continue talking, Lázaro discovers that though the man was born a squire, he is now poor. He’s only keeping up appearances. Lázaro realizes that his new master is so prideful he would never lower himself to getting a job. Later, when the squire leaves the house, Lázaro searches for food but discovers nothing. He finds some cabbage stumps and eats them, watching the squire talk to two prostitutes in a field down the road. The women aren’t stupid, and when they realize the squire has no money, they walk away. By afternoon Lázaro is so hungry that he leaves the house to beg. He is so deft at his vocation that he gathers seven loaves of bread, a cow’s foot, and some boiled tripe in only two hours.

When Lázaro returns with the goods, the master brightens. He tells Lázaro he must tell no one that he’s the squire’s servant, saying, “It’s a question of my honour, you see” (36). Lázaro knows the man is simply trying to appear like a wealthy gentleman. Later, when Lázaro eats his food, the master circles him. He commends Lázaro on what a good eater he is. He then tells Lázaro that he would rather have a cow’s foot than pheasant. Finally, Lázaro takes pity on the man and gives him some food, aware he is starving even though he keeps lying about just having eaten.

That year there is a poor harvest, and the town council tells the people that anyone who is not native must leave. They round people up and shoo them away. The master and Lázaro hide out. Lázaro can’t beg anymore lest he be caught. The neighbors next door give him coins once in a while, and Lázaro eats a little, but his master is starving. The squire blames his predicament on the house, which he says is bringing him bad luck. One day he gets ahold of a high-value coin and hands it to Lázaro, directing Lázaro to bring back some wine and meat.

As Lázaro thinks about how best to make the coin last, a crowd of people carrying a dead man on a stretcher descends on him. He presses himself against the wall. He hears the woman crying and screaming about her husband’s terrible afterlife. She says that he will go “to the sad and accursed place, to the gloomy and dark dwelling, to the domain where there is no food or drink” (40). Lázaro thinks the dead man is going to his master’s house. He races home and tells his master, who laughs when he hears it. When the corpse finally passes, the master pushes Lázaro out the door and tells him to get the food and wine.

One day Lázaro listens while the master tells him about his life. He was brought up as a gentleman but left because he would not take his hat off to a neighbor who was his social superior. He tells Lázaro he isn’t really poor. He has a few houses back home, never mind that they are falling down. But he can’t work even though he’s had the opportunity to be a right-hand man for a noble, because it would destroy his image and his honor. He explains, “It’s very hard working for them because you’re no longer a man, just a thing they use” (43). Lázaro fails to understand why people think like this.

Later, a couple enters the house and asks for rent. The squire says he will just run down to the market and make change, but he never returns. The couple calls the constable, who wants to arrest Lázaro, but they save him from jail when they convince the constable that Lázaro has nothing to do with it. They press him for information on the squire, and Lázaro tells them everything he knows. The police want the couple to pay the constable, but the couple have no money. As a result, the police take the mattress to pay off the debt. Lázaro is in despair that his master left him. He writes, “Now I was convinced of my tragic destiny and saw that everyone was against me” (46).