Chap­ter IV: How They Took Lazaro through Spain begins with Lazaro reflect­ing on a strange twist of fate that turned him from a man into an attrac­tion. After mirac­u­lous­ly sur­viv­ing an ordeal at sea—one he com­pares to Jonah’s tale—he finds him­self res­cued not by kind­ness but by oppor­tunists. The fish­er­men, eager to prof­it from the unusu­al event, decide to put him on dis­play across the coun­try. With the bless­ing of the Inquisition’s min­is­ters, they trans­form him into a liv­ing exhib­it. Moss is plas­tered across his face and chest, and sea­weed hangs from his limbs to cre­ate the illu­sion of a sea crea­ture. Lazaro, stunned and humil­i­at­ed, watch­es as his human dig­ni­ty is stripped away in favor of spec­ta­cle. Though he tries to object, his protests are quick­ly silenced. The men only see in him a chance to recov­er their losses—not a per­son, but a sto­ry to sell.

The dis­play is care­ful­ly craft­ed to draw max­i­mum curios­i­ty from vil­lagers and nobles alike. Lazaro, parad­ed as a “marine mon­ster,” is forced to remain silent while strangers gawk and cross them­selves at the sight. His words—when he dares to speak—are dis­missed as tricks of the dev­il or the sea. Even when he tries to explain how he end­ed up in the water, his cap­tors insist he was born of the ocean itself. At night, Lazaro con­tem­plates the absur­di­ty of his sit­u­a­tion, won­der­ing how quick­ly for­tune can turn a man into a joke. One moment he was strug­gling for breath in a wave; the next, he’s bound in weeds and treat­ed as less than human. When he speaks of fate, it is not with sor­row but with sar­casm, not­ing how eas­i­ly soci­ety turns suf­fer­ing into enter­tain­ment. And yet, even amid the humil­i­a­tion, he remains self-aware, his mind sharp with irony.

As the jour­ney con­tin­ues, the phys­i­cal bur­den of being moved, dis­played, and silenced takes a toll. Lazaro’s strength wanes, but the mock­ery grows loud­er. Chil­dren throw peb­bles, women whis­per prayers, and old men speak of omens. His cap­tors col­lect mon­ey at every stop, telling sto­ries more ridicu­lous with each retelling. Some say Lazaro was caught in a fisherman’s net; oth­ers claim he was sum­moned from the deep by ancient chants. Lazaro, still alive but voice­less in the eyes of the crowd, becomes a reflec­tion of how quick­ly peo­ple will believe any­thing if it enter­tains or fright­ens them. The truth no longer matters—it has been replaced by myth, sold one coin at a time. In this trav­el­ing the­ater, he is not the nar­ra­tor of his life, but the prop.

Lazaro’s own thoughts become his last refuge. He remem­bers the words of those who once warned him about the insta­bil­i­ty of for­tune and the empti­ness of appear­ances. He knows he was not born to be a spec­ta­cle, yet that is what the world has made of him. He laughs bit­ter­ly at the irony that the Inquisition—meant to pre­serve truth—now spon­sors his lie. Still, he endures, not because he believes it will end, but because endurance is all he has left. When he looks at the faces around him, he no longer sees cru­el­ty, only curiosity—the kind that does­n’t think, only stares. It’s not hatred that hurts him most, but the indif­fer­ence of the crowd. No one asks who he is. They only ask what he is.

Despite the humil­i­a­tion, this chap­ter also reveals a pow­er­ful cri­tique of society’s appetite for spec­ta­cle and its ten­den­cy to silence the vul­ner­a­ble. Lazaro, a man reduced to myth, becomes a sym­bol of how truth is reshaped by those with pow­er. His cap­tors are not mon­sters; they are oppor­tunists feed­ing a hun­gry audi­ence. And that audi­ence, blind to the man behind the cos­tume, teach­es a greater les­son about the dan­gers of belief unchal­lenged. Lazaro’s strug­gle is not just physical—it’s exis­ten­tial. He clings to his iden­ti­ty, qui­et­ly remind­ing him­self of his past, even if no one else will. In doing so, he keeps a piece of him­self untouched, a small defi­ance against a world too eager to for­get the human­i­ty of those it uses.