Windmills on the Brain: In Quijote Country

It was a late summer afternoon, hot and fragrant as a summer afternoon can only be in Spain. I was sitting in my favorite spot of all of Spain—up there with the old windmills, surveying the village of Consuegra and the plains of La Mancha. That was the heart of Quixote Country—a place where Cervantes staged the incredible adventures of one half-witted gentleman whom no village in La Mancha would own.

Quixote was obsessed with the books he read about knight errantry: He filled his mind with all that he read in them, with enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, torments and other impossible nonsense. He fancied himself as a knight errant, with the great and lofty goal of redressing all manner of wrong and exposing himself to chance and dangers, by the overcoming of which he might win eternal honour and renown. Then, on one sweltering July day that was so hot that it could have fried his brain, if he had had any, [he] armed himself completely, mounted Rocinante, put on his badly-mended head-piece, slung on his shield, seized his lance and went unto the plain.

For his squire Don Quixote converted a neighbor of his—an honest man . . . without much salt in his brain pan, to whom he had made outrageous promises of isles and kingdoms to rule. So off they went, cutting the strangest and most ridiculous figure imaginable, to encounter their first bizarre adventure.

I, too, had spotted the windmills by chance, but to me they did not seem like hostile giants, rather like crippled spiders clinging on to the hillside. It was warm and quiet: only an occasional gust of wind would stir my imagination. It was always windy up there—a likely place for windmills, on a hill like that.

'What giants?' asked Sancho Panza. 'Those you see there,' replied his master, 'with their long arms. Some giants have them about six miles long.' 'Take care, your worship,' said Sancho; 'those things over there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails, which are whirled around in the wind and make the millstone turn.'

The mills were used for grinding grain. I looked over to the stately line-up of the mills: the puff of the fine life-sustaining substance seemed to ascend and hover around the black conical roofs of the mills, momentarily veiling them in a misty cloud. I could almost smell the aroma of freshly-ground wheat.

'It is quite clear,' replied Don Quixote, 'that you are not experienced in this matter of adventures. They are giants, and if you are afraid, go away and say your prayers, whilst I advance and engage them in fierce and unequal battle.'

As he spoke, he dug his spurs into his steed Rocinante, paying no attention to his squire's shouted warning that beyond all doubt they were windmills and no giants he was advancing to attack. But he went on, so positive that they were giants that he neither listened to Sancho's cries nor noticed what they were, even when he got near them. Instead he went on shouting in a loud voice: 'Do not fly, cowards, vile creatures, for it is one knight alone who assails you.'

My vision dissolved into another. From the village below I heard a sudden cackle of hens—there must have been hundreds of them! It was as if Don Quixote himself had disturbed their busy peckings with his ponderous advance on his imaginary enemies: his counterfeit suit of armour clanked and clattered as he straddled poor, wretched Rocinante and commenced his bizarre attack.

At that moment a slight wind arose, and the great sails began to move. At the sight of which Don Quixote shouted: 'Though you wield more arms than the giant Briareus, you shall pay for it!' Saying this, he commended himself with all his soul to his Lady Dulcinea, beseeching her aid in his great peril. Then, covering himself with his shield and putting his lance in the rest, he urged Rocinante forward at a full gallop, and attacked the nearest windmill, thrusting his lance into the sail. But the wind turned it with such violence that it shivered his weapon in pieces, dragging the horse and its rider with it, and sent the knight rolling badly injured across the plain. Sancho Panza rushed to his assistance as fast as his ass could trot, but when he came he found that the knight would not stir. Such a shock Rocinante had given him in their fall.

My eyes moved down to the skeletal wooden arms of a windmill which lay on the ground at the foot of the enormous white mill. Remnants of a battle long ago? Yes, but only with time, rain, wind and incessant sun . . .

'O my goodness!' cried Sancho Panza. 'Didn't I tell your worship to look what you were doing, for they were only windmills? Nobody could mistake them, unless he had windmills on the brain.'

"Windmills on the brain!" I smiled and thought that I saw all the white sails of the mills puff and whirl in a great chorus. What an ingenious contraption, to harness nature's powers in that manner! The arms were attached to the conical roof, which could be rotated this way and that, to catch the best winds. "Coming about!" shouted the helmsman, and in unison the sails switched directions to hum a different melody.

'Silence, friend Sancho,' replied Don Quixote. 'Matters of war are more subject than most to continual change. What is more, I think—and that is the truth—that the same sage Friston who robbed me of my books has turned those giants into windmills, to cheat me of the glory of conquering them. Such is the enmity he bears me; but in the very end his black arts shall avail him little against the goodness of my sword.' 'God send it as He will,' replied Sancho Panza, helping the knight to get up and remount Rocinante, whose shoulders were half dislocated.

The afternoon had waned into evening, and the sun was rapidly sinking in to the perpetual ruddy plain. From my vantage point I watched a most incredible exchange of colors in the kaleidoscope of the setting sun. A new and welcome chill in the wind persuaded me to descend. In the last moments of the daylight I thought I could discern the dark silhouette of an unlikely duo slowly and painfully making their way towards Puerta Lapice. One was continuing his incessant discourse while the other, patronizing his master, expressed insincere concern over his well-being: ‘Sit more upright, sir, for you seem to be riding lop-sided.’ Their voices became gradually weaker as they waddled into the night.

'Here, brother Sancho Panza, we can steep our arms to the elbow in what they call adventure.' . . . He was much concerned, however, at the loss of his lance, and, speaking of it to his squire, remarked: 'I remember reading that a certain Spanish knight called Diego Perez de Vargas, having broken his sword in battle, tore a great bough or a limb from an oak, and performed [great] deeds with it . . . I mention this because I purpose to tear down just such a limb from the first oak we meet, as big and as good as his; and I intend to do such deeds with it that you may consider yourself most fortunate to have won the right to have seen them. For you will witness things which will scarcely be credited . . . '

BACK to KUTRI'S KUPBOARD
BACK to GREAT PLACES