Carmen

Following his encounter with Don José, the narrator travels on to Cordova where he examines the manuscripts held at a convent of Dominican monks. He explores the town during the evenings, and partakes in the popular pastime of watching the women of the town bathe in the river from atop a quay. The women assemble on the riverbanks and wait until the toll of a church bell sounds to mark nightfall before stripping. This way, the observers are never able to discern more than the barest shapes and outlines as the women complete their ablutions. The narrator heard tell that a former bell ringer was once bribed to ring the church bell early, before dusk had truly fallen, prompting the women to bathe in full view of the men atop the pier. In the narrator’s time, however, the bellringer is known to be incorruptible.

One evening as the narrator is smoking on the quay, he notes a beautiful woman he would soon learn to be Carmen sitting nearby. He extinguishes his cigar out of courtesy, but she tells him there’s no need as she enjoys the smell of tobacco and smokes herself when she can procure her preferred type. The narrator is able to provide her with one such cigarette, and they settle into companionable conversation. He introduces himself as French, and invites her to join him at a café to eat ice together. He also impresses her with his repeater, an expensive pocket watch equipped with a complicated mechanism capable of sounding out the time so as to allow the watch to be read in low light.

She tells him that she is Roma and named “Carmencita,” a diminutive version of Carmen, and offers to read his fortune. The narrator used to dabble in sorcery during his university days, and retains an interest in the supernatural, and so agrees. They head first to the café, and the narrator privately analyzes Carmen’s looks through a racist and misogynistic lens, concluding that she is an unconventional but alluring beauty. Carmen again expresses interest in his gold repeater, and they leave the café for her lodgings so that the fortunetelling can be done privately.

Her home is a single, sparse room kept by a girl who leaves after Carmen speaks to her in Romanes. The narrator is impressed with Carmen’s skill as a fortune teller, but they are interrupted partway through the reading when a furious Don José bursts into the room. The narrator prepares to defend himself with a wooden stool as Don José and Carmen argue in Basque, a language the narrator can’t understand. The narrator is clearly the subject of their disagreement, and Carmen gestures several times in a way that clearly communicates her desire for Don José to murder the narrator. However Don José recognizes the narrator from their previous encounter and refuses to harm him, instead escorting him out of the house and directing him back toward the main town. The narrator is put out, particularly when he realizes upon undressing that his repeater is missing— presumably stolen by Carmen.

The narrator doesn’t return to Carmen’s residence or inform the police of the theft, instead leaving the town as soon as his work is complete. He spends several months traveling through Seville and Andalusia, but must then pass back through Cordova to return to Madrid. By this time, the narrator has conceived a dislike for the town, but must nonetheless stay several days there to complete his business.

When he returns to visits the Dominican convent, the monks are shocked and delighted to see him. His distinctive repeater had been found among other stolen items in the possession of a captured Don José, leading the monks to assume that the narrator had been robbed and murdered by the bandit. The monks insist that he accompany Father Martinez to the prison so that the Corregidor can return the repeater. The narrator protests that he’d rather lose it than give evidence condemning the thief, but the monk reassures him that Don José has already been sentenced to death for multiple counts of murder. Because he is of the nobility, Don José will be garroted rather than hanged, although the narrator notes that in the present day both nobles and commoners alike are now afforded the privilege of death by garotte.

The narrator visits Don José, whose execution is set for two days hence, and brings him a bundle of fine cigars. Don José thanks him but returns part of the gift, saying that he’ll not have the time to smoke them all. The narrator asks if he could get Don José’s sentence commuted by applying pressure to any of his own friends, or by bribing any of the involved officials, but Don José asks instead that the narrator pay to have a mass said for his soul, and the narrator agrees.

Don José asks somewhat tentatively if the narrator would arrange for a mass to be said for someone who had wronged the narrator. The narrator promises to do so, the implied recipient being Carmen, although he reassures Don José that there is no one in the country whom he considers to have wronged him. Finally, the narrator agrees to deliver a small silver pendant of Don José’s to an old woman, presumably his mother, in Navarre. He is to tell her that Don José has died, but nothing of the manner of his death. The narrator visits again the following day, and learns the full tale of Don José and Carmen’s entanglement as told in Chapter 3.