by Max Besora
After dinner, Orpí asked the dwarf, “Thou didst tell how you escaped from thine lab, but I hath yet to learne the fate of thine Homunculus …”
“Oh, I carry ’im with me at-all times, in dis here little leather bag,” said the dwarf, opening it up to reveal a deformed little being, as tiny as a chickpea and as repulsive as a fetus. “The poor little guy canth speak yet, but he singeth like a troo nightingale.”
No sooner had he said that then the Homunculus began to modulate in a thin, raspy little voice:
So yeaaa they call me Homunculesss
Yeah, that’s right, hot off da press
I cou’ whistle, I cou’ dance, now ya hear me sang,
Yeah it aint no thang but a chicken twang.
Mine Creator was forever dreamin’
Of that day I came inta bein’:
Simple parts join’d with a dash of grace divine
Thou got thouses, now I gots mine
Cuz Imman intellectual with a fly IQ
Displayin’ strong emotions
like I loathe you.
Yeah, sassite, they call me Homunculus
No, not yer average avunculus
In fact this little man is hyper-magnetic
While others, they call him supremely frenetic.
Mine Creator, yeeeah, in His infinite wistdom
done gave me a closed digestive system
Now Im not made a no clay
Not sprung from no gard-enn
Make sexual reproduction passé
So go on and put away that hard-onnn!
And while that strange creature sang, Triboulet the Dwarf started to play a sac de gemecs55 and Orpí and Martulina frolicked in a highly entertaining little dance as the night sky rolled out a carpet of stars. And that was how our hero continued on his journey to Seville with two unexpected friends (plus a singing Homunculus) who would be of great help to him, because as we all know, “a life without friends is no life at all, it’s just passing days.” And now, let us journey on to the next Chapter.
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55. A type of bagpipe native to Catalonia.
Chapter III
In which Orpí and his friends, on their way south, happen upon a depressed knight
The three friends arrived bright and early to the capital city of the Kingdom of Valencia, where they purchased new provisions for their journey. The city was an unbridled hustle and bustle of buying and selling, where vendors feathered their nests. Triboulet and Martulina visited the Serranos Gate and the Silk Exchange, while Orpí bought some books by Roís de Corella and Isabel de Villena at rock-bottom prices. After resting one night in the city, the three friends continued southward.
As they were crossing a desert, the sun roasting their heads, they saw a man approaching at a gallop, gleaming like a star. He shone thusly because he was wearing an old-fashioned suit of armor, with a lance and standard and a shield with a noble crest. Let’s clarify, now that we’ve reached this point, that a knight such as that was an anomaly in the landscape, because the only knights left by that point were in fairytales and in engravings like the one reproduced below.
Be that as it were, the anonymous knight, upon seeing Orpí and his companions, spurred on his horse and, with his lance pointing straight at their noses, he hurled himself fast as lightning on the attack. The three friends didn’t know what to do or where to hide because they were surrounded by desert. But as luck would have it the horse stumbled, and both beast and rider fell on their asses. The tremendous racket of the metal plates of armor crashing against the ground echoed through the entire desert and a couter, his sword, surcoat, the crest atop his helmet, and one of his shoes trimmed in metal went flying through the air, along with many of the screws, rings, hooks, straps, and buckles that held together his suit of armor.
The knight tried to stand up but the thirty kilos of metal he was wearing made that impossible without the help of Orpí and his companions. When he was finally standing on his own two feet, the knight began to cry. It was a remote, childish, metallic weeping, since he was still wearing his helmet. The anonymous knight introduced himself as Grau de Montfalcó from Castle Pink, son of Gausbert de Montfalcó of Castle Pink, and he ceased to be quasi anonymous ipso facto.
“Mayhaps thou’d feel better if thou tookest off all that scrap iron,” said Martulina.
“Nay, I doth never removeth mine armor, not even to sleep,” said the slightly effemininate Sir Grau. “Nor mine helmet, Knight’s Honor. As the great March56 did sayeth:
As armour forged in steel crunches with a blow
And that made of iron is pierced at the slightest
When joined together they withstand every test;
et cetera, et cetera…”
“Quitte bawling like some Amadís de Gaula, man, pastoral novels are for spinster aunts,” said Orpí, trying to cheer him up. “Bucke up, any day now thou shalt find chivalrous virtue & a princess’s love and some minstrel shall singeth thine exploits.”
“Nooo!” howled the knight from inside his helmet. “Nowadays minstrells only chase skirts. Tis all ‘thine gams art golden’ and ‘thine locks be the fount of mine adoration’ and corny stuffe of that manner. I shall end up having to pen mine own exploits, like a regular olde picaroon. Thou may as well just kill me now! As Tirant sayeth: Oh, fortune, so displeased with me, sometimes exalting me and othertimes bringing me so low!”
“Knyght, picaroon, pastor or pilgrim, it be all the selfsame as long as there’s adventure,” mused Orpí.
But Grau de Montfalcó seemed to suffer from severe depression and he was not listening to reason. So our hero decided to camp out beneath an olive tree for the night. They invited the knight to sup with them and treated him with the kindness and care that any sensitive person needs in such moments of existential anxiety. Before a controlled bonfire (where Triboulet was roasting some partridges), the knight, continuing to wear his armor and helmet in everlasting perpetuity, confessed his traumas:
“Ere since I was a wee tyke I was ever bein’ told that I had to do as mine father dictat’d,” murmured the knight in a metallic voice. “First they hadst me castrat’d to see whether I had what it tooketh to be a capon,57 but uponst seeing that I wouldst never be a soprano, or even so much as a mezzosoprano, mine father did decree I wouldst be what mine grandfather and great-grandfather hadst been, viz., a knight. I desir’d to study medicine still & all thee wate of family tradition did make me what I be at the presente: a walking anachronism. From hither to thither, I doth ride from one ende of the earth to the other, casting ’bout fer someone to smite in a duel, seeking bewitch’d damsels, obsolete tournaments, and giants and dragons in distant caves knowing, as I knoweth, that suche things existeth mere in dreams and in books.”
“Thy frustration bee understandable, friend,” said Orpí. “We all hatheth ambitions, but some art more realistick than others. As a knave, I too did dream of becoming a knight, since they appeare a good mite better in books than they doth in realitee.”
Having said that, Orpí pulled out one of the many books he carried in his satchel.
“I recommend thou readeth yond editio princeps of a highly popular book: The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, by a writer I knewe briefly in Barcelona. It doth stand up very welle against Martorell’s Tirant.”
“Tis right naybourlee of you. But I ne’er wanted to be a knight, nor an ingenious gentleman, nor any suche thing!” lamented Grau, putting away Orpí’s gift. “I’ve abhorred violence ere I was a child, the sight of blood makes me faint, and I canst barely lift my broadsword and make a thrust!”
“Thou must ‘kill thy father,’” said Martulina the Divina. “That be the only way thou shalt be free to choose what thou truly desireth, without the weight of family pressure.”
“She’s got a pointe,” added Triboulet the Dwarf. “I killt mine with a hammer blow at the ripe age o’ six … and ever since I’ve had the best of luck!”
“I meant symbolically, half
-idjiot,” clarified Martulina. “As a fledgling, they bade mee dress as a gurl, and do all that whiche little girls do (mend, scrub, bake), till one day I did choppe mine hair off, pluck uppe mine things, and hitt the road. Disguised as a knave I canne liveth out mine dream of swashing a sword and having adventures.”
All these group confessions seemed to cheer up the knight of Montfalcó a little, although it was hard for the three friends to tell since with that helmet on they didn’t know if he was smiling or still crying. Finally the knight decided to take it off, revealing a glimpse of his chubby, oval face and his hair, white and fine as a baby’s. He looked like he’d never hurt a fly.
“Thank ye, friends,” he said with his effeminate voice. “Thine kinde words hath persuad’d me to make a life change. I vow58 never again to be who I be not. If tis alle the selfsame to ye, I shall accompany ye along on the present pilgrimage, seeing as ye be the sole friends I hath in this worlde.”
Thus, with the addition of an existentially unshackled Grau de Montfalcó, Joan Orpí’s companions on his journey to Seville became three instead of two. Ay no, four—I can’t forget the Homunculus!
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56. i. e. “Tot entenent amador mi entengua,” by Ausiàs March.
57. i.e. Also known by their Italian name, castrati, these were boys who underwent orchidectomies so that their singing voices would always stay high, to better reflect the apogee of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Italy.
58. i.e. Vows were a common recourse within the knightly realm.
Chapter IV
In which Orpí and his friends meet up with a sect of mystics and take part in a remarkable competition
While Orpí and his friends rode south, along the patrol road, they stopped their horses at a watering place where the following sign was posted:
FIRST ANNUAL CONGRESS OF THE ENLIGHTENED INSCRIPTION: 10 MARAVEDIS
(INCLUDES A GLASS OF PLONK AND AN OLIVE)
Behind the sign there were many people milling about, and when they saw the riders approach they invited them to partake of the refreshments they were serving. So Orpí and his friends mingled with the pilgrims. Our hero soon realized that he was in the midst of a meeting of madmen. And we say that because, in one of the circles that had formed, a group of people were watching an orgy between a eunuch, a hermaphrodite, an eighty-year-old woman, a monkey, a huge dog, a goat, and a four-year-old child, the old woman’s great-grandson.
“Slip ’er the ole church atop the belltower!” shouted one onlooker.
“Now … squeeze & dig!” yelled another.
“Here cometh the twitter-light, tinting the worlde with darkness!” exclaimed another further on.
Orpí, horrified, asked one of the spectators in Spanish, “Pray telle, what sort of diabolickal gathering be this, sires?”
“This be the Annyual Conventicle of Toledo dejados or alumbrados, disciples of Isabel de la Cruz,” said one man.
“Our objective be acheeving mystickal ecstasy through amourous rites. We doth rejecte the concept of sin, preferrin’ coitus and orgazm as the supreme union with divinity,” added a second man.
“We donst subscribe ta tha worship a saints, ’r fryars, n’r the adorayshun a relicks ’r Catholisism in generall,” informed a third.
“We sweareth to forswear wage, coin, and power,” affirmed a fourth. “And to disrate pain and suffering in fav’r of the earthly plaisures.”
Orpí and his friends observed the various circles. In some, there were people fornicating, in others the mystics whipped themselves mercilessly, and in still others they ate the excrements, pus, and vomit of the dying. In one of those circles there was an adage and proverb contest. The winner was to receive the prize of a sexual experience with a pony. Triboulet the Dwarf, who was competitive by nature, entered the circle, where a “dexado” was waiting for him. They began to battle, face to face, barking proverbs and adages at each other in the middle of the circle, one in Spanish and the other in Catalan:
“A fool and his money art soon departed!” said the dejado.
“A leopard can’t change his spots!” shouted Triboulet.
“Napple a day keeps da doctor away!”
“There be reason in the roasting of eggs!”
“Durly bird catches da wurm!”
“Half a loaf is better than none!”
“Play wid fire, and you’ll get burned!”
“Make hay wile the sun shines!”
“Necessity is the muther of invention!”
Triboulet the Dwarf’s mind went blank, but he opened up the small bag where he kept his Homunculus and the little being, in his high-pitched voice, yelled out:
“Spare at the spigot, and let out the bung-hole!”
“More den one way to skinne a cat!”
“Watch da donut, not the hole!” said the “dexado.”
“Patience be a virgin!” continued the dwarf.
“Whem da catz away, da mice’ll play!”
“Squeaky wheel secures the grease!”
“When it raineth, it poureth!”
“Strike while the iron be hot!”
“A bird in thine hand tis worthe two in thine bush!”
“Look beforst leapeing!”
“Speak soft and carry a nice stick!”
“Idle hands conclude the devil’s work!”
“In the land of the blind, the halfman is king!”
“The worst men giveth the best advice!”
“Even a broken whore’s right twice a day!”
“Enuff … !” shouted Orpí, weary of so much folly, as the two competitors panted and drooled from their efforts. “Enuff, enuf, ennnuf of this infernall paremiology! This be a conventicle of ninnyhammers, not mystics!”
Just then a tremendous din of galloping horses was heard. A band of armed men appeared out of nowhere shouting, “Death be to the heretics! Alle hail the Golden Fleece!59” while they ruthlessly swung their swords and decapitated the dejados and everyone ran around shrieking and bloodied from the attack of the fearful swordsmen who … 60
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59. An order of chivalry related to the Hapsburg dynasty.
60. Unfortunately this Chapter is unfinished because the ink on the original manuscript faded beyond recognition. Nonetheless, Joan Orpí and his friends survived the adventure, since we see them all again in the next Chapter.
Chapter V
In which Orpí and his friends are robbed by thieves and then celebrate St. John’s Eve
Making their way south, the four friends traveled around the city of Cordoba and came across Andalusian goat herders lying pastorally beneath the trees together with their herd (with whom they made many happy memories), sport hunters on horseback with their dogs running behind them; soldiers in regiment, solitary pilgrims, and highwaymen hiding in that parched and shriveled landscape where every cave was a castle and every hill a watchtower. The friends navigated towns, rivers, and streams with their eyes peeled and the triggers of their harquebusses at the ready, just in case.
When night fell, Orpí and his friends decided to stop and refuel at a small rancho61 made up of improvised tents. No sooner had they arrived than they met three shifty-looking didicois dressed in old rags. Amid ceceos62, they invited them into a ruinous cortijo63, saying they wanted to invite them to supper.
“Come in, have a zeat, fellowz.”
Once everyone was inside, the three gypsies pulled out their flintlocks from beneath their capes and politely demanded money from our hero and his friends.
“Didicoi shysters,” declared Orpí.
“Vile geneaology,” agreed Grau de Montfalcó, weeping in fear.
“Tis but an expression of the class struggle,” explained Martulina the Divina. “The Roma art poor people rebelling in defiance of their poverty.”
“Ye seeketh fortunes and adversity,” said Triboulet the Distasteful. “But mistake me not: fer I be one of ye, I steal to live and thusly live carefree. I gette ye!”
&nbs
p; The muggers, ignoring them all, went ahead and shot their weapons, but the flints were too worn and none of them worked. The three scalawags then tried to run out and steal their horses, but when one mounted Acephalus, the steed bucked and threw him off while relaxing its sphincters and impregnating everything with a gut-churning odor. The didicois, relinquished and repentant, confessed, “Hey, man, even though weez pickpockets we too be childrenz of Undivel.64”
“Luck favorz the bold. We make our way, bezeeching and eyez peeled for something to znatch, but we don’t want to zin no more.”
“We’re thievez because nobody done never teached uz nuffin, to uz gypzies. We don’t know how to read nor fright …”
Orpí, seeing that the didicois had good hearts, gave them the following sermon:
“Sirs, I wilt admit I didn’t understandeth a word of thy very particular mumbo jumbo, but as a lawyer, I wilt telleth thee plain: highwaymen, thieves, sluggards, and murderers shouldst beest punished with the full force of the law. However, as sure as mine name be Joan Orpí, the good are allways rewarded and ne’re suffer, and ingenuity and fine intentions can transmute evil into productive peace. So let us forget this incident, for verily no wanion has transpired here.”
The three thieves, hearing that speech and the name of the speaker, gratefully said, “What a fine lezzon of mannerz you sirz have gived us. From now on, we zhall try to be zomewhat better peoplez. And what a conzidenze about yer name, zince today iz Zaint John!”
“Itz June 24th!”
“Zinging, dancing, and bonfire! Pilgrimz, ye art welcome to join uz!”
Without any ill will, Orpí and his friends followed the pious, reformed gypsies to the middle of their camp, where a crowd had formed to celebrate our hero’s saint’s day with some hundred-odd people who, despite being poorer than a skunk’s misery, invited them to eat a stew containing the spines of animals they’d hunted, goat anus, and extremely hot Arabian spices, and everyone enjoyed the feast, happy and sated. Then they were enjoined to partake of a spicy black broth, made specially for that celebration, called cornezuelo, made from a fungus of the Claviceps family that has psychotropic properties. With an enormous bonfire burning in the center of the circle of caravans, they began to sing jácaras and dance in an improvised, eclectic, and detached way after drinking that broth. Some of them rolled around in the mud like happy sows, others leapt over the flames shrieking and laughing, others tore off their clothes and danced half-naked, gyrating their hips.