Stressing the subtle exceptions and the limit cases, I might also say that I stand in all humility and modesty before these wild Attilas. The patriarcane head of this oasis of peace that is Paraguay, I do not use violence nor do I permit it to be used against me. Let us say, in short, although it is saying a great deal, and only as a figure and movement of the mind, feeling myself to be a reserved, retiring Abraham, clutching the knife here in this dense brush on the third day of the Foundation. A solitary Moses erecting the Tablets of my own Law. Without clouds of fire around my head. Without sacrificial calves. With no need of receiving the Rebelled Truths from Jehovah. Discovering for myself the falsehoods overthrown.
Placed side by side, impossible to compare me with them. But on the other hand my honor would be no less than theirs if we were to establish a passing coincidence with those founding patriarchs as regards time and place. All things considered, they too had their difficulties, marked off by knots standing for forty. Moses took 40 years to lead his people to the Promised Land, and they are still wandering about from sion to Zion. Disper-sion. Inaccessible dimen-Zion. Poor Moses spent 40 days, which were another forty years, on Mount Sinai in order to receive the 10 commandments that nobody observes. I needed less time; 26 years were enough for me to impose my three capital commands and lead my people not to the Promised Land but to the Land Fulfilled. I have achieved this without departing from the axis of my sphere. According to the Bible, the flood covered the earth for forty days. Here, ills and calamities of all sorts rained down for three centuries and yet the Ark of Paraguay didn’t founder. In the New Testament we read that Jesus fasted for 40 days in the desert and was tempted by Satan. Here in this desert I fasted for 40 years and was tested by 40 thousand satans. I was not vanquished nor will they crucify me as long as I’m alive. So, vicar, you can see how much the cabalistic forty preys on my mind!
You pollarded padres speak of God by painting shadows and sketching abysses in your rat-trap churches. It is not by believing but by doubting that one can attain to the truth, which is ever changing form and condition. You clericocks paint God in the likeness of a man. But you also paint the devil in the likeness of a man. The difference, then, lies in the beard and the tail. You say: Jesus was born under Pontius Pilate. Was crucified. Descended into hells. The third day he rose again from the dead and ascended into the Heavens. But I ask you: Where was Jesus born? In the world, Céspedes. Where did he do his work? In the world. Where did he suffer his martyrdom? In the world. Where did he die? In the world. Where did he rise again from the dead? In the world. So then, where are the hells? In the world, that’s where. Hell is in the world and it’s you who are the devils and the imps of Satan, with a tonsure and a tail hanging down in front.
* * *
—
In the Bible we read that when Cain killed his brother Abel out of envy, God asked him: Cain, what hast thou done with thy brother Abel? He asked him, but he did not punish him. Hence, if he exists, God does not punish anyone. He is the one who is punished, for pointing to the truth. What truth? What God? That’s what I call painting shadows that no one can grasp, however long his fingernails, however many blessed candles he clutches in his accursed hands.
Nonetheless, I did not forbid any form of worship here. Nor did I fancy creating the cult of the Supreme Being, which certain weak governing powers feel the need to enthrone on their altars, thereby unfurling a protective umbrella for the morrow. The Dictator of a Nation, if he is Supreme, does not need the help of any Supreme Being. He himself is that. In this capacity what I did was to protect freedom of worship. The one condition that I imposed was that the form of worship be subservient to the interests of the Nation. I promulgated the Patrial Reformed Catechism. True worship does not lie in to-ing and fro-ing, but in understanding and complying. I want works, not words, for words come easily while works come hard, not because it is difficult to accomplish work but because the original evil of human nature twists and poisons everything, so long as there is not a soul of iron to watch over, guide, and protect nature and man.
What I did was to protect the National Church against the abuses of those who, instead of serving it and dignifying it as was their duty, debased and degraded it with their dissolute morals and vices. You priests and monks lived publicly with your concubines. Far from being ashamed of it, you boasted of it. Eh? Ah! Here you have the tract of that Rengger and Longchamp pair. Testimony beyond suspicion from this point of view. The prior of the Dominicans, among others, Juan Rengo recounts, light-heartedly confessed during one meeting that he was the father of twenty-four children born of different mothers. How many have you sired, Céspedes? By God and the Blessed Virgin, Excellency, you’re putting me on the spot! Your Worship knows…Yes, that you’ve sown more than a hundred offspring; for the most part, among the savage heathen of the gentle sex in Misiones, your duty being to imbue them with Christianity, not impregnate them. Many of these sons of yours are now enlisted in the troops of the line guarding the borders. More honorable than you are. I wouldn’t say that here in the capital my vigilance has resulted in making you chaste. But it has at least restrained your lustful urges somewhat. If only your behavior had been intended to challenge the rules of canon law by adopting the rules of the droit de cuissage! In their twisted sensuality the partisans of the tonsure have straightened out the matter by laying claim to both rights at the same time. Which is inexcusable. In 1525 Martin Luther married a nun. I married, Don Martín maintained, not out of love but out of hatred for certain rules reeking with age. I could have done otherwise, since no intimate reason obliged me to act as I did. But I took the step I did in order to mock the devil and his henchmen, the princes and the bishops, the inventors of hindrances, on seeing that they were mad enough to forbid the marriage of priests. I would be pleased to provoke an even greater scandal, Don Martín said, were I to discover that there is another position I might take that would both please God and enrage my enemies.
Stop twisting your roll, Céspedes. Accept your faults as I accept mine. In this confession ex confessione we must absolve each other mutually. Excellency, my gratitude for your unlimited magnanimity and generosity will be eternal. You have done me an honor by having taken those poor souls in at the House for Poor Girls. The House isn’t called that anymore, Céspedes. There are no more poor in Paraguay. You are well aware that by Supreme Decree it is now called the House of Foundling and Orphan Girls. What are they if not orphans, even though their parents are still alive? Orphans, but not poor. Adoptive daughters of the State. Children must not suffer for the sins of their fathers.
Moreover, as you also are well aware, I did not confiscate the possessions, the convents, the innumerable properties of the Church with the aim of hereticizing the country. I did so with the aim of clipping the wings of the dissolute servants of God who in reality made him serve their purposes as they led their crapulous lives at the expense of the ignorant people. They came close to parading their fat humanities in the streets in puribus.* Modesty, much less shame, was no longer the rule for either the regular or the irregular tonsured clergy. Why the talaric habit if these Alarics could swoop down on women’s wombs at any place and time they chose? How did the monks go down to the river to bathe, Patiño? Bare naked, Excellency. In a secluded spot? No, Sire, near the sewer outlet of La Lucha, in the little stream always full of washerwomen. You see, Céspedes. Piranhas and caribes sliced off the incelibate member of more than one of your followers. They came out covered with blood. Which apparently did not doom them to forced celibacy, for in a short time, as though the stump had sent out new green shoots, they were up to their old tricks again. Was the Government not obliged to take measures against such inequities? Is this to have risen up in rebellion against God? Was it not, rather, to protect him against the blackest abuses of the clericocks?
When the brain of Bishop Panés divaricated, what did the madman do, Patiño? Back in those days, Sire, he craftily found a way to come bother You
r Excellency every day, trying to make him believe that he had the Holy Spirit trapped in a cage in the sacrarium of the cathedral. He maintained that the Bird-God dictated his pastorals and humilies to him, and that it was he, the bishop, in person who copied them down with one of the feathers that he had plucked from the wings of the Holy Spirit. The last time he sought yet another audience, Your Worship ordered me to tell the bishop that if what he wanted was to ramble on once again about the Trinitarian Cock Pigeon, he need only to have it roasted and eat it. That a good bird like that would have sufficient virtue to dispel all the vapor of madness that had accumulated in his head, and that if this was not enough to cure him, he should find himself a little turtledove like the other friars, who didn’t go out dancing but did better still by staying in with their sisters. Unless there is some error or omission in my account, that’s the story of what happened, Sire, and I wash my hands of it. Ah, Patiño, you confounded imbecile! You muddle and mix up everything. The horrible way with words of an idiot. I didn’t order you to tell the insane bishop that he should roast the Trinitarian Dove and eat it. I ordered you to tell him that he should cut a pigeon in two and apply it to his head as a plaster. You know very well that this is the remedy used here and everywhere to draw bad humors out of the brain. A pigeon, any pigeon. Not the Holy Spirit, you sacrilegious idiot! That part about the turtledove was added by you, you irreverent mulatto, you vulgar prattler, making mock of that poor old man who was practically a nonagenarian. I didn’t order you to pass on that rude message to him. I ordered you to tell him that I was not an idler like him, hence able to receive him at any and every moment, and that if he wanted us to remain on good terms, he should occupy himself with the duties of his office, unless he preferred to have his seat taken from him. Later on, people went so far as to spread the calumny that I poisoned him with the bottles of wine for Mass that I sent him as a gift. Excellency, in the name of Heaven, the shadow of that suspicion has been sufficiently dispelled! The death of His Reverence was due to his bad health and more than advanced age. When the bishop died, what did they find in the sacrarium? Spider webs, Excellency. You see, vicar, how frail the form of the Spirit is! All I did was to confiscate the possessions of the Church. Clean out the impure hordes that had populated it. I cleaned out the rats’ nest of the convents. I turned them into military barracks. I ordered the ruined temples to be torn down and burned. I left the ritual intact. I respected the sacraments. I stripped the mad bishop of his prerogatives. I put you in his place, for even though you were not the best you were also not the worst. Hence, even if the Government has ceased to be Catholic it must continue to respect religious faith, so long as it is sincere, austere, without malice, hypocrisy, fanaticism, or fetishism.
Here, through the fault of you País, precisely the contrary happened. Do you remember, vicar, the commanders who asked that statues of saints be sent to guard the frontiers? You’ve just seen what the parish priest of Encarnación tried to do to the widow of my sentry Arroyo. A matter of fees. Dirty business.
The priest-Paí is the one who has made this faithful people adulterous. It was full of innocence, of natural goodness. If only they had left it in peace, to live in its primitive Christianity! The Old Testament tells of Jehovah’s fits of wrath against a Jerusalem crawling with scribes and pharisees. It tells of the misdeeds of the wicked priests, of the false prophets. If this happened in the times of Jehovah with the so-called People of God, what miseries were not to reign here in these lands that the Catholic conquistadors and missionaries came to reduce to a foreshadowing of hell for the greater glory of God?
I removed Bishop Panés from his seat in 1819, after many years of his refusing to fulfill his obligations or exercise his ministry. His madness itself, whether real or simulated, was merely the form assumed by his furious rancor against the patriots. Atheist! Heretic! Anti-Christ!, my clandestine calumniators cry to high heaven. And what do priests here below do? Nothing but skim the pot of black intentions. Nobody is better acquainted with the bottom of the pot than the ladle. I des-potted the ladles of friars and priests. I scooped them up out of their cubbyholes and lairs of shame and degradation. If you’ll allow me to put my spoon in and stir that pot, Sire, let me add that Major Bejarano took the confessionals out of the churches at your order, and set them up throughout the city as sentry boxes. A pretty sight, Sire, those carved and gilded wooden niches all along the streets! The guards sitting inside, keeping watch through the little satin curtains. The tips of their drawn bayonets poking out, gleaming in the sun. Your Excellency, very pleased, used to say with a defunctory laugh: No army in the world posts its guards in more luxurious sentry boxes! The women kept coming to kneel before the grilles of the ex confessional sentry boxes wanting to confess their sins. Denouncements. Complaints. Delations. Quarrels between neighbor women. A few grains would sometimes get stuck in the sieve of the grille. The guard-curé imposed penance on sinneresses in the ditches and sent sinners to the nearest police station. A man of unsound mind came to confess to the sentry that he had assassinated Your Excellency. I wish to pay for my sin! I wish to pay for my crime against our Supreme Government!, he kept shouting so that everyone in front of the Barracks of the Recollects could hear him. He was foaming at the mouth. I killed our Karaí-Guasú! I want to pay, I want to pay, I want to pay! I want to be executed! The sentry didn’t know what to do with the madman. Go and turn yourself in at the barracks. No, I want to be killed here and now!, the madman kept shouting. He leapt up from the spot where he was kneeling, grabbed the guard’s bayonet, and plunged it into his breast up to the hilt. I killed the Government! And now I’ve done it again!, were his last words.
It’s as I was saying, Céspedes. Those are the sort of bedevilments that the evil País have produced in these poor people. They all practice deception. Then they try to cure the affliction, to heal the wounds of my people saying: All is well! Peace! Peace! Peace! But that peace is nowhere to be found. The priests do not shepherd men in the fields of the Gospel. They minister to devils. Hasn’t the Pope of Rome himself just said as much? Hasn’t he just emphasized the frightful plurality of the devil? The pontiff himself! To your knowledge, Céspedes, how many demons were there in the New Testament? Sixty-seven, Excellency. No, vicar, you’re not up on the latest demonographic statistics. In his latest bull, reprinted in the Buenos Aires Gazette, the pope stated that there are thousands upon millions of demons. Did you hear? Thousands of millions! They’ve multiplied more than the human species. You see what a tremendous sperm count Satan has! Now each sinner no longer has just one poor devil to contend with but millions of potent, lustful demons. What can a single guardian angel do against so many countless evil ones! Are we all doomed then, with no possible remission, to plunge headfirst into hell? What to do against the Prince of Darkness? For the moment, do away with all that remains of the ecclesiastical apparatus, which has proved to be of no use in the fight against Satan except to let the asses of the faithful go down the drain, as the vulgar saying goes. From the establishment of the Church in Paraguay in 1547, the altar industry has produced so much wealth that it sounds like some sort of preposterous story fit to make us die laughing. I’ve made very careful calculations. With a mere half of all that wealth we could have bought, three times over, all the Yslands of the Yndies of the Ocean Sea that are under the Brotherhood of the Lord, comprising the Ymmense Fold of the Faith, as the Bull of Erection reads. The entire bull is taken up with the stipendiary, salariary, tariffary, prebendary, canonary, and calendary ordinaries, and all the other benefices of all the personnel that the Ymmense Sheepfold of the Faith was to shelter. Of the annual rents two hundred gold ducats allotted to the episcopal table, the bishop being empowered to augment it, enlarge it, alter it freely and licitly as often as he saw fit in his diocese. To the dignity of dean, one hundred fifty pounds. To those of archdeacon and precentor, one hundred thirty pesos. To canons, one hundred. What do these anchorites do? The archdeacon, Excellency, examines the clerics
who are to be ordained. The precentor presides at the facistol—the choir desk—and teaches the choir servants to sing. The canons celebrate Mass in the absence of the bishop, and recite the Passions, the Epistles, the Prophecies and the Lamentations. Enough, enough, Céspedes. Since there are no more prelates, choirs, or choir desks, and we’ve had it up to here with passions, prophecies, pasquinal epistles, and defamatory lamentations, all these benefices are abolished. And all these benefits. Do you understand, vicar? No more canonicates, acolicates, prebenders, or fascistos of any sort. Abolished likewise the indignities of prebenders who enjoy high living at seventy pesos a head, and half-prebenders who half live it up at thirty-five rupees per capita. What’s this sinecure of magistral canon? His duty is to teach the clergy grammar, Excellency. Abolished. And that of organist? His duty, Sire, is to play the organ at pontifical Masses, at the bidding of the Prelate of the Cathedral Chapter. He is also the one, along with the dean, who gives those persons who need to leave the Choir during the Service because of an urgent necessity of their organs permission to go. Look, Céspedes, at all the waste there’s been from 1547 to now with all of this widdle-waddling from the choir to the crapper! Out! All finished! Order all satans in soutanes who have survived the abolition of 1824 to be sent off to work on the patrial farms and estancias. Those too old or too ill to be sent there are to be interned in hospitals, asylums, hospices, or madhouses.
I the Supreme Page 46