The Adventures and Misadventures of the Extraordinary and Admirable Joan Orpí, Conquistador and Founder of New Catalonia

by Max Besora

  “Pero, master! If thee injestest the guarynara, the sacred wood, perhaps it will cure the French disease, master,” advised Araypuro, in perfect Catalan. “I’ve also made thee a remedy employing aranto, from the ojarasin family.”

  “Leave off the balderdash & poppycock, injun, none o that will cure what ails me. Tis the anguishes I’ve suffered over the course of this life that slay me! There be no point to so much worry, nor art fame & honors worth the pain, for at the end of life all I hath to show for it be the four hairs on mine head. I forgive all the Castilian noblemen for all their grudges and may all those I’ve wounded or killed forgive mee as well. And now heed my counsel, Araypuro: bee happy and do not thinke too much, thou shallt live longer. And as thou hath been loyal, not as a serf but as a true bosom buddy, I name thee Governor General of the Brand-new New Catalonia and I gift thee mine dog Friston & mine steed Acephalus. And that concludeth mine testament, if it be poorly composed prithee forgive mee … for I suffer a bisarre paucity in mine body.”

  And with that, Orpí—his eyes rolling back in his head and his face out of joint—had a final celestial vision prior to the de rigeur rigor mortis: it was the Black Virgin herself come down from the heavens with her typical blinding brilliance and a chorus of otherworldly voices from beyond the grave:

  “Orpínet, Orpínito, thine tyme hath come, seeing as the prophecy hath been fulfilled!” she said. “How was thine little adventure?”

  “To be frank, I still hath many more thinges to doeth in this world, milady!” complained our hero. “Couldst thou allengthen mine lyfe a coupla years more?”

  “Sure, no prob, and whilst I be at it I shall injecte some hairs on thine pate and find thee a twenny-year-old wench!” guffawed the Virgin before disappearing into the divine ether. “What thou must do, in this worlde as in the next, is eat grass, eat grass …”

  “Sweet Black Virgen … halp mee!” exclaimed Orpí before expiring.

  And thus passed on Joan Orpí del Pou, on July 1st of 1645, in his early fifties. The next day Father Claver officiated a mass in “the glorey of our Lord ad quam nos perducat Iesus Christus Filius Dei, qui cum Patre et Spiritu Sancto vivit et regnat in secula seculorum Amen” and then he sang a hoarse rendition of “Dies Irae,” and left brand-new New Barcelona to settle in Cartagena de Indias, where he devoted his life to the protection of Black slaves. Meanwhile, Araypuro and the other Neo-Catalans presided over his burial, according to the local rituals, as the Homunculus sang a very heartfelt song that went a little something like this:

  Well, c’est la vie

  aint none o this new ta mee

  aint nuttin but a cinnamon bun

  meltin in the tropical sun

  nothing sure but death and taxes

  we all gotta face our axes

  one State or another

  my sister my daughter my mother

  in the promise of a second

  buildings and cities, I reckon’d

  in perpetual motion

  a fish jumping in da ocean

  aside a ship pointing to the southern seas

  an itsy bitsy ant down on its knees

  toasting beneath the sun

  of a northern land set to stun

  that’s cold, that’s hot

  aint none of this what its not

  bees buzzing o’er a gilded bloom

  vouz ferez le voyage outta this earthly room

  eternal returns

  infinite reincarnations

  that’s life, that’s death

  c’est la guerre, c’est la vie

  that’s the end of Joan Orpí

  move on, nothing here to see

  God glimmers in the white teeth

  Of the devil smilin in the black heath

  A distant star dancing in the universe

  A wish that’s risk adverse

  A story that beginnes

  Stories that have reach’d their “FIN”s

  Legends gasping wid a wheeze

  The chaos of a loud sneeze

  Religions in left field

  The Final Mystery revealed

  A million strategick confessions

  glimpsed in extraterrestrial expressions

  Falling into the void

  Eyes wide open

  Eyes wide closed

  That’s life, that’s death, c’est la vie

  That’s the end of Joan Orpí

  Told as ne’er before heard.

  Joan Orpí’s body was laid to rest and his dog Friston kept watch over his gravesite day and night, ceaselessly howling until one day he too died of sadness. And that, dear readers, is how my licentious tale ends, and the moral of the story is: don’t try to do it all in this life, or you won’t be left with anything good to do in the next. Vale.158

  The infantry captain ends his telling of the tale and a great secret is revealed:

  September 11th, 1714. A distant howl traverses Barcelona: Philip V’s troops busting down the city gates. As the Catalans lay dying beneath the royal fire and artillery, a group of soldiers and plebes listen, mouths agape, to the end of the captain’s tale, beneath the arch of the theater in ruins.

  “The story of Joan Orpí concludeth,” says the captain. “And were it worthy of the telling, tis because it hath allowed us mental respite beneath enemie fyre and bestowed a bit of lyfe to our bodys. Our earthly bodies, to be clear, for the Author of life shall take care of our souls.”

  “Dis whole fable hath been highly entertaining, Captain,” said one of the soldiers. “But what war the true cause of Joan Orpí’s demise?”

  “Chroniclers and historians hath come to no agreement,” responds the captain. “However there art three possyble theories: 1) neumonyia or untreated siffilis; 2) poisoning by Domingo Vázquez de Soja’s assassins; 3) murder’d at the ’ands of a possibble large-scale conspyracy of American natives, in an attempt to kill all white men and restore sole native rule on the continent. There also be a rumor—little likely yet not ludycrous—that his body disappear’d and rests mummified in the cave where Orpí and Araypuro hiddest the treasure.”

  “And what befell the New Secret Catalonia following the decease of Joan Orpí?” asked another one of the soldiers. “Tisnt crystal clear, yet I’ve the impression you aint told us the hole sooth and nuthing but the sooth … Pray tell, of what art you trying to convince us? Or, better put, what art you trying to sell us?”

  “I merely wanted to exxplain the story of an ordinary man who, through frekwent faylures, achieved great ’eroick feets. Now, ta be fair, one thing is verily sooth: Joan Orpí didst create his own previous future, as he thought up New Catalonia in advance and on his own. And with dis firm, clean, sincere, smooth, heroic, precise, and daring gesture, our hero left his definitive mark on history. And all de rest is merely myne figurative telling, for memory be not print’d like books.”

  “And what be so durn speshall bout thinking up New Catalonia, Captain?”

  “That he thought it up on the very arse end of nowhere … that’s what so durn special! But you are right, in fact, I still hath not told you the entire story …” acknowledges the captain, removing his hat and ripping off a fake moustache, thus transmuting into a strange being.

  “Oh!”

  “Ah!”

  “Uh … miracle!”

  “Tis science, not miracle. Gentle sirs, I be nun udder than the very Homunculus, created by the grace of Triboulet the Dwarf, and imbued with a talent fer immortality,” said the faux captain, taking a bow. “Forgiving this final trickery, as discreet and amusing, ye all can be quite sure that there still be—in the middle of the virgin jungle—a wee community of mestizos, a mix of natives and white Quakers, who speak an odd Catalan, dance the Sardana, pray to the Virgin of Montserrat (because she’s dark-skinned like them), self-determine as a (small) independent sovereign country: Independent from Spain, independent from Catalonia, from Europe, from the rest of America and from the world in generall. A republic freed of cliques and illus
trious family names, where neither private property nor sovereign authority existeth, where all live in a communitas of absolute equality and where nature mobilizes the resources, as the economists say, or in udder wordes provideth all that be necessary. In short: a new Eden … and ye all be invited! My (secret) mission here is to bring back all the Catalans (specially Catalan women of marriagable age) I can to New Catalonia! A vessel awaits us in the Barcelona port. Tho’ while I be here I also intend to plant mine seed amid the ladies of this Catalonia, to engender a new mestizo race in the jungle, because commingling makes da worlde go round, and because I doth struggle to keep it in mine pants.”

  “Incredible!” exclaims one of the soldiers.

  “And what be the name of this new territory?” asks a woman.

  “New New Catalonia,” answers the Homunculus. “Listen, the shit here done already hit the fan. I’m off, back to the other Barcelona, folks. Would ye care to join me or doth ye preferr to die the proverbial and literal horrible death here?”

  “Count me in!”

  “Me too!”

  “& me!” exclaim soldiers and civilians.

  Shots are heard, and screams, and bombings, and breaking glass, and collapsing walls. Philip V’s army advances into the city. Meanwhile, the soldiers and the throng of women, children, and the elderly leave the theater behind and follow the faux captain to the dock, where a small ship is waiting. It sets sail immediately for America, fleeing certain death. The Homunculus, standing at the ship’s prow, now in a more confidential tone addressed only to the soldiers, who look up at him with inquisitive eyes, unbuckles his sword belt and lets it fall to the floor, frugally fills his pipe with Almogàvers™ tobacco and slightly contracts his expression to accompany the gesture of his left hand lifting, and puts the pipe in his mouth, lighting it as he advances one leg forward to contribute to the desired theatrical affect and, with his eerie gleaming eyes fixed on a point in the distance, says: “Eat grass.” The end.

  ___________

  155. Here we see the birth of what would become the University of Saint Jeremies, although it first began, according to Father Claver’s wishes, as a monastery. In the early twentieth century the building was destroyed by a missile during the Great War of the Thirty Tyrants. It would not be rebuilt as a university campus until 1946.

  156. i.e. Here we see the author (or authors) complying with the Horatian simile of ut pictura poesis, in which literature and painting are placed on an equal plane.

  157. i.e. health

  158. i.e. Latin farewell.

  Max Besora started his career as a poet, and has since gone on to publish four novels. The Adventures and Misadventures of the Extraordinary and Admirable Joan Orpi, Conquistador and Founder of Catalonia received the 2018 City of Barcelona Prize for Best Catalan Novel of the Year.

  Mara Faye Lethem’s award-winning translations include novels by Irene Solà, Albert Sánchez Piñol, Javier Calvo, Patricio Pron, Marc Pastor, Marta Orriols, Alicia Kopf, and Toni Sala. She is the author of A Person’s A Person, No Matter How Small, Antibookclub, 2020 and the story “Twin Flames” in Berkeley Noir, Akashic Books, 2020.

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