by Max Besora
After that speech, our hero headed off with his dog Friston to rest at his ranch, because he’d gotten his blood pressure up. However we, at any rate, must proceed with this story, which continues in the following manner:
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153. i.e. Settled new population in a territory.
Chapter XXV
In which Orpí’s patience runs out and he rebels against the injustices of the criollo noblemen
With the Reapers’ War in Old Catalonia, everything took on a doubly dramatic edge due to the distance. But events taking place in the Principality could easily turn against our Joan Orpí’s personal pet project. The increasingly skimpy loads of gold and silver being exported from America to the Court in Madrid had intensified the hatred toward the rich, lush region of New Catalonia. Every day news arrived of Administrators and Officials landing from Madrid with serious expressions and dire faces, carrying mysterious orders to the criollo noblemen against our hero. And as if that weren’t worrisome enough, he also knew that some of his admirals had betrayed him, switching sides for the promise of ignoble gold. While Orpí’s complaints to the monarch were systematically disregarded, the criollo noblemen of Caracas had begun a brazen policy of boycotting New Catalonia, and now refused to sell or trade any products with the region.
Our hero’s solitude increased in proportion to his growing historical significance. Revolted by all that plotting, Joan Orpí reacted by putting the final touches on something he’d been cooking up for some months. The political shift that events in the Principality of Catalonia had taken had emboldened our hero, who was now seriously considering how to break off relations with the Crown of Castile.
“I canst even!” he shouted one day, losing his temper in front of his generals, in the offices of the War Council. “If those dogs of the Crown cometh back yon with their redde tape and estupid laws, I shall knocke them all on their shit-covered arses! I hath not gone bougie nor calm’d, but rather I be prepared for watsoever trouncing of those jobbernowls.”
“Do not blaspheme, milord,” said Father Claver, trying to calm him down. “Let not the Devil guide thine steps in lyfe.”
“Basta wit’ the sermons, Father,” Orpí replied, as he passed an arbitrio154 to the priest. “I know fulle well that our two-bit monarch has sette his sights on New Catalonia. We doth generate too much wealth compar’d to the other Venezuelan vice-royalties, and the Crown is bankrupt. They art not prepar’d to relinquish the golden gooser eggs. However, they shalt not strippe me of it so readily!”
“We must create state structures, establishe a strategic planne, self-gobern, redefine our cultural autonomy in a separatist State and beginne the process of sovereignty!” advised Captain Jeremies, nationalistically.
“I think we should leave all that be in hands of the Court …” suggested Captain Octopus.
“And, if possible, without waging war …” added Captain Sedeño de Albornoz.
“There be no tyme for any of all that!” said Orpí, banging his fist on the table. “Those nobles hath left me broke as a joke and tis not funnily! There be tyme only for brave resolutions, deare friends, and now I must listen to mine heart and not mine head. Look out the window: the Neocatalans art hoppin’ mad o’er the boycott impos’d by King Philipito and the criollo noblemen of New Andalusia.”
It was certainly true that the city of New Barcelona was filled with antimonarchical refugees from everywhere. One of them was just then singing a song about the political situation, making jabs and taking swipes at Governors, Corregidors, Mayors, Justices in the Audiencias of the Courts of the Indies, the royal Administrators and Officials, and—generally—with every accomplice of the Crown:
We art so weary of the King
his coin obsession it doth sting
False justice his perogative
We doth find it pejorative
So no more señor nice guy
Long live our fatherland!
Refrain: Which fatherland?
New Catalonia, of coooourse!
For every king be a tyrant
Our new nation sempervirent
And barring any sleight of hand
We shall never leave our homeland
Long live our fatherland!
Refrain: Which fatherland?
New Catalonia, which else?
“The reapers hath mutinied in the original Catalonia, we should verily be apt to push back all these Espanyolades,” said Orpí, lighting his pipe after listening to the ditty. “The tyme hath come to challenge the Court. I shant allow those green-eyed puttocks to take what I hath earned over thee course of so many adventures. They can verily sard off!”
“They shall send in the troops!” said General Octopus.
“Not if we act speedy and industrious,” reflected Orpí. “The Crown is in neede of menne to wage war with the French and the Catalans, they shant spare many contingents in the defense of a remote colony. If we challenge the nobles of Caracas and Cumaná, we hath gots a chance.”
“Thou dost venture most high,” lamented Jeremies.
“They shall slay us like wee mosquitoes!” said Captain Scourge.
“Tis easy to see thou hath read myriad imaginative books …” added Father Claver, grabbing the cross that hung down his chest. “Challenging the Crown is suicide! Furthermore, it entails losing thine human condition, sullying thine soul, and becoming cruelle.”
“Have faith, Father,” said our hero. “Chance to die every last one, yet we shall winne fame and honor. Tis better to be in disaccord with the entire world than in disaccord with one-selfe, as Plato said.”
“Dost thou ween that the Catalans of the Principality or the American larva shall give two hoots if thou be Joan Orpí or Pepet dels Horts as they devoure thine cadaver in the sepulture?” asked Father Claver. “As far as I hath learnt the wurms hath no awareness of ’istory and couldst care no less for ’eroic ephemerides. Repeat not the brouhahas on the Pin-insula.”
“I no longer hath a thinge to do with the Pininsula,” exploded Orpí. “New Catalonya is mine sole fatherland and its virgin taigas, mine home. Gather everyone! Bring them all to New Barselona! The tyme hath come to appointe an army!”
Orpí had a triumphant halo as he and his captains traveled to every end of New Catalonia, gathering up all the tribal leaders in the region, promising them legal citizenship in New Catalonia. They hailed him proudly and aggressively prepared for war to the rhythm of their tam-tam drums. Soon five hundred men assembled in New Barcelona, armed with harquebusses, swords, daggers, bows, and arrows and all sorts of killing devices. The spies of New Catalonia, trained in the art of occultation, went from province to province to learn the criollo noblemen’s plans and, while they were at it, conspiring the secret revolution among the antimonarchical comrades gathered in private taverns, carrying secret missives under their hats, hiding instructions that were passed from hand to hand in dark alleys or the depths of the jungle, convincing discontents stealthily behind a barn, in the back rooms of any town, in the caverns beside the cliffs, in clandestine speakeasies filled with soldiers of fortune surrounded by large clouds of tobacco smoke, beneath tables filled with people to impregnate the rebel seed in their minds and nourish local revolutionary attitudes where least expected.
One day, our hero went to Santo Domingo in disguise to meet up in secret with Governor Diego de Arroyo, the nobleman who had helped him ascend in his military career, and seek out an alliance.
“Urpín, thou dost alreddy know how much I value thee, but what you proppose is crazytalk,” said the Governor. “Rumor tells me that thou art forming militias with hopeless malefactors, and fans of infamy & crime to wage war against the Crowne like a Pizarro or a mad Aguirre, be that sooth?”
“Some say Aguiree was a devill, others consider him the first great liberator rebel of the Americas. Yet I be neither one nor the other, Governor Arroyo, but rather a simple businessman who doth not desire the intervention of the state when it merely intervenes to ro
b what doth not belongeth to it. I be not guided by any external aut’ority, rather I demand the unconditional freedom of my own self-rule.”
“I understand,” responded the Governor. “However I canst not give thee the alliance that ye seek. As fond as I be of thee, and as loathsome I findeth Domingo Vázquez de Soja and his band of noblemen, my loyalty is to the King.”
“I too understand,” said Orpí, tipping his hat. “Then all that be left is to thank thee heartily for all thee hath done, Arroyo, for thine stance now maketh thee mine enemee. It remainth to be seen who shall laff last.”
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154. i.e. Name given, in the first half of the seventeenth century, to the fiscal reform treaties designed to save Spain from its economic ruin.
Chapter XXVI
In which Araypuro earns a Chapter all to himself in this bizarre story
While New Catalonia prepared for war, Araypuro was swimming contentedly all by his lonesome one day, in the waters of a bright blue stream, when he suddenly spied a squadron of royal soldiers amid the jungle’s trees.
“How goes it, mestisso?” called one of them from the shore.
“Caint complain,” he said, practicing the crawl nonchalantly.
“Splishitty splashitting like a caiman?”
“Sumpin like dat …”
Without further ado and just for the fun of it, the squadron charged and shot their harquebusses at him. Yup, you heard right.
“Mudderfuggers … these bros are lookin’ for a fight!”
Araypuro seethed with hatred as he made his way out of the water, doing the butterfly stroke. Then he started running through the jungle as the royal soldiers chased him the way one chases a game animal of very high caloric value. And Araypuro seethed even more. All told they ran a league and a half. And then they kept running. In the pursuit through the forest, they were all attacked by stingetty-sting-sting red ants, gonorrheaic ticks, and somewhat murderous hornets. One of the soldiers shot his weapon and a bullet, smoking with diabolical gunpowder, dodged a surprised bird, coconut palms, vines, and couple of carnivorous plants that whistled out an exclamation, until finally landing on Araypuro’s right ear. He howled with pain, grabbed a round rock and catacrack! threw it at that same soldier who, with helmet and all, fell to the ground loosening sphincters.
“Bullseye! Na-na na-na poo-poo!”
That infuriated the soldiers even more, and they ran more rapidly through the brush, while Araypuro kept looking back instead of ahead of him, until he found himself at another stream where, just then, an Indian lass with a marvelous smile was washing her braids.
“Allo? Who be this impertinent jackanapes?” she asked, frightened.
“Yoooo … what dey do, jit! No time for all that!” exclaimed Araypuro. “Da bearded abominations are coming!”
And so they both, holding hands and holding their breath, dove beneath the water and swam amid wiseacre anacondas, dwarf whales, catfish, tambaquis, and grinning piracucus. The soldiers attempted to grab them, but one who was bleeding from all the bramble scratches ended up devoured by three hundred dancing piranhas, while another spasmed and fell, electrocuted by a very rare, fluorescent electrical eel. They ceased their pursuit. Meanwhile, the pair of swimmers continued diving and the Indian lass with her braids sang, aquatic and divine, to convince the river to not take their lives:
How! Beloved amapuche riverlife
Who ever give-um and never take-um
Embrace-um us with thine life waters
Pure spirits and good vibraciones, dale?
Lead-um us not to macumba happy hunting ground
For many moons, make-um us heap glad
Oh riverlife, may thine waters protect-um
Take-um to pure sun gardens, hey!
A giant river turtle who had listened to her little song invited them aboard his shell, allowing them to traverse the underwater algae and make it back up to the surface, far from all danger. As they dried off inside an enormous sun-flower-house, the Indian lass formally introduced herself amid real tears:
“Me name Ta-Ipí and me tribe, the Tarumba, live here since birth of sun, among flowers and birdies, but now paleface come—what thee call Castilian, destroy our jungle and our all. Very distressing.”
“Please cry not, fine squaw,” said Araypuro. “Let us expel them forthwith!”
Ta-Ipí, seeing that Araypuro was fearless and brave, wanted to play with him, and he did not object seeing as he was quite taken with the princess. They ate guanabanas and chirimoyas, flown in by the aviary fauna of troupials and Pantepui thrush, and they snuggled up beneath the leaves and branches they were gifted by the Samán and Camoruco trees. And thus they spent the evening, sighing, kissing, and giggling, until they fell asleep in each other’s arms, superhappy and head over heels.
“Me feel all cuchurucho,” he said.
“Me right there with you, my hallaca,” she added, making almondy eyes.
When they had finished their playing for the time being, Ta-Ipí accompanied her new friend to her village and asked her father, King Ma-Naa-Cri, for permission to marry Araypuro. The King, seeing that he was a mestizo, wrinkled his nose. But the Queen Mother, Tra-La-Rà, who was really the one wearing the pants, consented. The wedding was celebrated that very night and the entire village was invited. The party lasted for hours and Araypuro was happy: “Oye, broder, what a shindig! Y’all sure knowe how to throw a getty that never stops! But … there still be a bululú of soldiermen out there, and they do not have pure love in their hearts for us.”
To put paid to that farce for once and for all, the entire tribe armed themselves to the teeth and went out to face up to the soldiers. With their arrows tipped in mortal poison they forced the Castilians to retreat to the border of New Catalonia. Araypuro fought like one of the tribe, finally winning the affection of his king-in-law, who still wasn’t sure about the victory:
“Will palefaces return, hero-in-law?” asked King Ma-Naa-Cri.
“Supposably. And in spades. We must now leave for where my boss waits. There ye shall have protection and live in peace.”
“And what shall become of tree and river and piracucu, which give all and to which we owe all? How shall we live without our motherjungle? What care me about paleface wars?”
“While the worlde keepeth turning, all thinges change … oh king-in-law. The bearded palefaces be trippin’ wid this here gold and land, and they not goin’ nowhere. Hasta the most buzzard fopdoodle among us will suffer at their hands. Soon there shall be no jungle left for no-one.”
And thus the village of the Tarumba packed up and moved to the recently founded New Barcelona. When Juan Orpí saw Araypuro, he exclaimed, “Wherefore hath thou been at, injun?”
“Do not getteth all angry bird on me, massa. The spirits hath gifted me a wife … and I put a ring on it!” he said, introducing Princess Ta-Ipí.
“Commendations! Thou wasteth no time!”
“Dassit. Why live in this worlde without love?”
“Verily,” said Orpí. “And who be these: Tagares, Tasermas, Tozumas, Guarives, Guaiqueríes, Chacopatas, Cocheimas, Palenques, or Caracarares?”
“Tarumbas. Not Catholics, not Baptists, not passive, not addictive … very active. Cuz it don’t matter if you’re black, Indian, white, or yellow polkadot. We all be together on mine piano keyboard here in this macroterritory, therehence we musteth live in peace and harmony.”
“Dulcet words, injun,” said Orpí. “But if thou hast wag’d war against the soldiers of Vázquez de Soja in Neocatalan landes, that meaneth that the final battle approacheth, and tis too late for all else. The Tarumbas & their King be welcomed hither, there be room for all who aid in our fight.”
King Ma-Naa-Cri swore friendship to Joan Orpí and the Tarumbas were soon beloved within the New Barcelona community. Araypuro and Ta-Ipí looked deeply into each other’s eyes and, after sighing, retired to play their version of the rumble in the jungle, all blessed evening long.
C
hapter XXVII
In which the war between men and the battle between Heaven and Earth confound Joan Orpí
During those days our hero was tense with nerves. He paced around the round table of his War Council, stopping in front of his officers, who were perusing broadsides that announced a more-than-likely imminent civil war between New Catalonia and its neighboring viceroyalties. Orpí had an army of five hundred men, who were satisfactorily trained but poorly armed. Their entire arsenal consisted of harquebusses, swords, daggers, native bows and arrows, and a few rusty cannons. They managed to cover all the vulnerable points on the coast and in the jungle by erecting fortifications for the defense of their small homeland.
The criollo noblemen of Santo Domingo ordered a royal commission be sent to mediate the conflict. When the members of the commission arrived at the Council office, they found our hero sweaty and with his hair awry, while his dog Friston snarled and scratched at the fleas on his scruff.