by Roman Payne
“Squawk!” cried Pulpawrecho. Then gathering himself, he said that all his clothes were nice, and even his suit, though it was ill-fitting.
“But that is not my fault. It’s not my fault his suit is illfitting,’ said Dragomir, ‘I even engaged the finest tailor in Málaga for him; but all clothes are ill-fitting on Pulpawrecho. He has a weird body. His shoulders slope oddly. You see he looks like a fiend with the shoulders of his jacket like that, but he is no fiend. He is very clever, my little Wrechito. You should pose him some questions.’
“Pose him? Alright, how did you two come to meet?” Feeling anesthetized, comfortable in my new surroundings, I forgot completely about the world outside, the city and country I was in. All that existed was this room with the tall, gaunt figure of Dragomir, and the hunched-over gargoyle of a servant on a stool, and my own self sinking lower and lower in my chair.
“How did we meet? How did I meet my master? Oh, that is a fascinating story! Oh, it’s splendid, that sweet opium! …Master, let your Pulpawrecho have one more little puff. Another little puff. Then what a story I’ll tell!”
Dragomir handed the pipe to his servant and his servant bared his black teeth as he blew out hissing smoke.
“Saul is a nice name. Does its meaning have to do with the sun?”
“It means prayed for.”
“Does somebody pray for you?”
“Pulpawrecho,” said Dragomir, “Why don’t you ask me that. I am the clairvoyant, aren’t I? Give me your hand…’ Dragomir snatched at my hand like a street artist and scanned it momentarily and then dropped it in disappointment, ‘Ach!’ he said, ‘I see nothing in your hand. Neither a past nor a future…” He turned to his servant… “Then again, I never was reliable at reading people’s hands. No, that was never my talent, was it!” Dragomir roared with triumphant laughter.
The candle flame flickered, the laughter dimmed in the room, and Dragomir dropped my palm limpidly on the wooden desk. He promised that he would pray for me when our ways parted. He then laughed with unease.
“So, then, how did you two meet?” Curiosity was nagging me about this strange pair.
“May I please, Master? May I tell the story?” Pulpawrecho squirmed with his question. The master nodded and the servant began spilling words ever faster; his hands flew and fluttered, trembling lightly like dragonflies that hover near a flower but never quite land, nor do they go off, so did the servant’s hands hover around his body without settling anywhere, nor going off anywhere.
“I was down at the seaport three years ago,” Pulpawrecho began to explain, wringing his hands, “doing my trade—buying, selling, trading, whatever I could to make money. I had a pocketful of stolen watches—you see, I’m a thief.” He paused to smile a sinister smile at me, “Watches of all kinds—silver, brass, steel, I even had a gold Breguet! I was waiting for the hour to strike twenty so I could get into Gordita’s freidurías and get a meal of crispy fish. I was licking my lips with the thought of that fish meal. Then I saw this young girl heading up from the sea. At first she appeared very small, and I thought she were just a little child. She wore a hood over her head that covered her hair completely, except for one lock of golden brown hair that fell from her hood and curved around her chin. Details like this always strike me. I miss nothing.”
‘No, that’s true!’ interrupted Dragomir with a laugh, ‘Pulpawrecho misses nothing. Although he seems simple at times, nothing gets by him…’
‘Right,’ continued the servant, “so here in the humid night was this girl coming towards the street in the port; and I thought it was too late for a young girl to be alone, walking up from the sea. Then as she came close I saw she wasn’t a baby. She was adolescent at least. Maybe thirteen or fourteen. Let’s say she was thirteen. How beautiful she was! I had never before seen a beautiful creature like this. She seemed to be hurried. Hurried and baffled. Why do I say baffled?
“The young girl looked left and right, as though she were afraid of someone coming to snatch her. I admired her perfectly formed and smooth beautiful face, and my groin began to burn with the erection that was growing. I’m Pulpawrecho, you know, so my penis turns purple when it’s hard. My penis grew hard and purple in my pants and my thighs burned with scorching heat and I wanted to catch this pubescent girl and succumb her and press my lips all over her. She hurried past me, her neat little bottom (a bottom the size of two fists of a man) rubbed its cheeks together, and I saw her torn skirt ruffling in the speed of her walk, and the tissue rising-up revealing the base of her cotton underwear (you see how descriptive I am! That’s how I see the world!); her cotton panties rose up revealing soft and tiny butt cheeks down to her thighs, until reaching very thin and beautifully-formed calves— smooth as the white meat of a fresh market chicken. What legs she had! I began to follow her, those legs, that tiny bottom, never leaving my sight. ‘Yam-yam!’ I smacked my lips. Of course, me being nothing but a sorry Pulpawrecho, I knew she wouldn’t want me like I wanted her. I could never have her… still, I wanted her!
“…We turned down many streets, narrow streets smelling of urine and rotting food. Finally she came to the street where we are now (this, Master Dragomir’s street). She stopped as though stunned, frozen before the wooden plaque that’s posted outside the gate with Master Dragomir’s name stenciled in the wood. The sweet girl stopped and brushed her little hands on her ruffled skirt as she studied the sign for a moment, all the while, anxiously looking around her, desperately almost. I hid in the shadows like a wolf, watching…
“Then, in a swipe of her hands, the little girl let the hood fall from her head and a magnificent bouquet of hair toppled down over her shoulders. She was dark-haired, but golden at the same time, both pale and dark! I rubbed my hand over my groin to settle the stiffness that was growing bigger and more uncomfortable. I had to settle my desire! The girl’s desire meanwhile stayed on that wooden sign over the gate. What did the sign say?, I wondered. I saw her kiss her hands then. Why? I don’t know, but she kissed her own hands. All the while, she looked around with a way I can only describe as baffled. Dropping her dirty hands, she pressed the latch on the gate. The gate opened and she hurried into the courtyard and was gone!
“…I fled from the shadows and crossed the street and planted myself where she had stood moments before when she kissed her own hands. ‘Clairvoyant,’ I read on the sign, ‘A clairvoyant? Very curious!’ . . . I pressed the latch as she had done and entered into the courtyard. There were many doors leading to stairs, I couldn’t tell at first which stairs she had taken to enter into the building (the entrance to this building wasn’t exactly then as it is now). Alone, the courtyard was silent and empty. I heard tiny footsteps far off, but they belonged to an alley cat that was pouncing down a drain pipe. I knew she had gone up to visit the clairvoyant, why else would she have been looking at the sign? The problem was that there were many stairs and I worried if I went up one, she would come down another at the same time and be gone forever. I decided to wait for her in the courtyard. Was it fear or patience? I didn’t want to confront her in the lighted room of a clairvoyant. I wanted her alone, in the dark, like the predator I was….”
Pulpawrecho stopped his story to smack his lips and take a breath. I was poured some water and began to drink. The wretched servant went on talking…
“While I waited for the little girl to come back down, I backed into the shadows in the courtyard and masturbated. I was so flushed with excitement, I ejaculated immediately all over the brick wall and stuffed my throbbing sex back into my trousers. Still panting, having not yet recovered, I then spied that the girl leaving out the gate from which we’d entered. I looked at one of my watches and realized she’d been upstairs an entire half-hour! Now she was leaving, hurriedly; she looked even more baffled then she had when she had come. Do you realize what I’m saying?! . . . The girl had looked so baffled a half-hour before when she’d arrived. Now, leaving the clairvoyant, she seemed even more baffled then before!
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��…So, this sweet girl went scampering down a side-street. I left in pursuit of her, but I was too far behind and she was too quick. I’m a speedy little man. But something was driving her in haste. She had a purpose, I could tell. I lost my love to the narrow winding streets of the town. I knew that the only way I stood a chance of finding my beautiful pubescent goddess again would be if I went back to the building to find the clairvoyant myself and ask him. He would know where she was headed. He of all people would know what was on her mind—or in her mind, rather. A clairvoyant knew the future, right? He could help me catch my prey….”
“Ah yes!” Dragomir interrupted with a chuckle, “I remember it as if it were yesterday. You tell a story well, little Pulpawrechito, as if you were reading from a book. You talk just like a book! You see, Saul,” he turned to me, “This little man climbed the stairs that night, a stranger then to me as you were tonight, and he buzzed on my door…”
“No, I thundered up the stairs!” Pulpawrecho broke in, “and buzzed on Master Dragomir’s door. Master answered right away and admitted that there had been a girl to see him—a young adolescent girl with a hood—only moments before. I pleaded to come in and said that I would pay for a consultation. I would pay for his help. How much would it cost? I had money and gold watches in my pocket. I didn’t care how much it would cost. I was ushered inside…
“Master Dragomir permitted me a visit and let me sit in this very chair where you are sitting now. ‘This beautiful girl who visited you,’ I asked while trembling, ‘she looked baffled. Where did she go? Did you send her off somewhere? You read her fortune to her and then she left? You should have detained her!’ (I was almost in a fever of desire as I spoke to him that night. I couldn’t control myself, it was as if I were drunk.) ‘She was so beautiful!’ I cried to the yet-unknown clairvoyant,” Pulpawrecho inclined his head towards his master as he said this, “‘Yes, she was a cute girl,’ Dragomir replied, ‘if you like… children. So what’s the big deal?’ . . . ‘The big deal?! You let her go!” I gripped the table in fever, ‘without trying to keep her here!’ . . . ‘Why should I have tried to keep her here?’ Dragomir asked me, ‘I don’t abduct children!’ . . . I remember he put particular emphasis on the word ‘children,’ as if my girl didn’t arouse him sexually because of her tender age. Meanwhile, in my groin a heated fire was scorching what remained of my store of semen. My sex was growing hard again with the thought of that adolescent girl with her pale dark and golden hair that tumbled out of her hood, her tiny breasts pressed against her little shirt, and her baffled face turning left and right as she skipped through the shadows in the Spanish street. I was growing enflamed and excited. Master Dragomir, however, was calm. He reclined in his burnished leather chair and took up a newspaper and put a pair of glasses on and began to read to himself it as if I were a nobody, and wasn’t here altogether.”
“‘Can you tell me at least where she went?’ I begged in desperation. ‘I will pay for a consultation. I will pay dearly!’
“‘I don’t normally offer information to people I don’t know and don’t care about.’ . . . ‘Will you let me pay for it? I’ll pay! I’ll pay!’. . . ‘The important part of my phrase,’ he replied, ‘was the people I don’t know or care about part. You can pay me, if you’d like. I’ll take your money and tell you this or that, but what I tell you may lead you nowhere. She is a young child. You are a middle-aged man. You are old and she is in her first throes of puberty. Why do you want her so badly? You can bribe me. You can give me gold. Still, your little girl may never be found.’
“‘Yet if you knew and cared about me,’ I asked him, ‘you’d tell me more? Who this mysterious girl is? Where she went? Where she is likely to be found? How I can have her?!’ I wrung my hands as sweat dripped from my face. I looked left and right. My memory flashed back to when I’d been spying on her outside and her little bottom, those butt cheeks like two little fists, clenched with indecision, and she removed her hood and those beautiful locks of hair poured down over her sweet face. Now my consciousness returned to where I was. I looked with my beady Pulpawrecho eyes around this room of Master Dragomir while I gripped his table with my fingers that started to bleed from the pressure… ‘Let me be your servant then!’ I cried suddenly. ‘Let me be your servant!’
“Suddenly the pressure was released. I looked around the room in confusion. Why was there nobody around? Did he not have a servant? No one had opened the door for me to let me in. Dragomir was all alone in this musty room. ‘Why,’ I asked, ‘is there no one to open the door for you?’ …My words seemed to barely register with Dragomir as he sat in his leather seat with his reading glasses on, scanning the newspaper. I, meanwhile, was frenetic. I would have committed any act, no matter how irrational, to know where my thirteen year-old girl could be found. I would have eaten my own stool if Master Dragomir had asked. Anything to find that child! ‘…Let me be your servant then!’
“Dragomir said nothing, but continued reading silently. “‘Let me be your servant,” I pleaded with torment, “Until you know and care about me enough to help me find my girl!’
“A seeming eternity followed. Finally, Dragomir broke the silence… ‘This is most interesting! A ver-ry in-ter-est-ing story,’ he issued to me in a calm voice, his eyes focused on his newspaper; he spoke in his strange accent (at that time, he still had a strong accent. He was new to Andalusia then, three years ago).”
Pulpawrecho continued narrating his story to me as I listened quietly in the chair, wondering why a shrewd, seemingly intelligent runt like Pulpawrecho would entrust such a scandalous story to me—a complete stranger. It was the opium, I knew—that terrible truth serum. Dark secrets guarded for a lifetime can be divulged with carefree folly after a sip of the black smoke. I took another inhalation from the pipe when Dragomir insisted, and felt the opiate stupor renew itself. Pulpawrecho finished his interesting story…
“‘Please, Sir! Let me be your servant!’ I was unable to stand the silence of my master reading his paper.
“‘This is a story you should hear, Señor… I’m sorry, what is your name?’ … ‘Pulpawrecho,’ I told him. … ‘Señor Pulpawrecho, there is this interesting story in the paper here, about the famous Juan Gomérez trial that’s been going on. Have you been following it? No? Surprising! A man like you who enjoys following strangers, one would think you would know all of the gossip. Oh well. It’s a fascinating case. I’d like your opinion on it. I’ll paraphrase…
“‘There’s a famous court case that is happening right now in Spain. The story is on everyone’s lips, surprising you are ignorant of it. A man, a Spaniard by birth, of very fair complexion, is to be hanged for killing a baby. Infanticide, you see. Many citizens say he should hang or be burned alive, while others say he should be set free. The people who say he should be set free, interestingly enough, are the upright citizens, many of whom are women, people of high birth and moral integrity. It’s a scandal and I’d like your opinion of the matter…
“‘The story goes as follows: A certain pale-faced Juan Gomérez, who is skinny and very short in stature, was living in a poor barrio of Sevilla with his newlywed wife. She was a beautiful negress—enormously tall, with chocolaty skin and a round and mighty rump. They say she had, or has rather, penetrating eyes that will cause fear in a man, and sharp white teeth that shine between her dark lips. She had come from the Ivory Coast and has been living in Spain for ten years…
“‘Juan Gomérez is a good Spaniard, dutiful and patriotic. As for his tastes, he found the most beautiful race to be the black race. ‘Black women alone,’ he decided, ‘have the exotic allure mixed with the feminine power a man loves.’ When Juan was first love-struck by this great negress, he asked her to move in with him, share his bed, etc. Eventually, through his earnest vows to be her slave in all matters, he talked her into marrying him. And so they were married. He did all the work around the house. He trolled around with his little mop and broom, cleaned and cooked and pleaded for sex; and she too
k advantage of him most of the time, but she felt some affection for him, so she shared his bed and ate the meals he cooked. Once her mother came to visit from the Ivory Coast. The two women drank on Juan’s money and went carousing. They would come home late at night with all sorts of odors on their skin, their big black breasts hanging out of their blouses. The mother only stayed a week or so as she couldn’t stand our dear Europe, she said the European customs were filthy; she missed her home in Africa, missed the food there, etc., etc., so off she went…
“‘…Later, the first cousin of the great negress came to stay. He was a mighty tall negro with arms of steel and a voice as low as the thunder of hell. He ate all that Juan could cook and he spread his heavy body out on the floor and took up so much room, that the poor Juan Gomérez with his apron and frying pan hid quivering in the kitchen most of the time, asking his wife in a trembling voice if she or her cousin wanted more to eat or more wine to drink. Fortunately for him, that nightmare didn’t last long as the great negro cousin had some altercation with a conscript soldier in the street, and not having had all his papers in order, he was deported back to the Ivory Coast. Juan was relieved, and more in love with his wife than ever….
“‘Soon this great beautiful negress found herself pregnant. Now while woman gives her body as an incubator to her child and risks her life in childbirth so that this child may grow and her genes may live on after she is dead, continuing her legacy and creating a sort of immortality of her personal species; so does a man give his labor and time and resources to the child born of his genes, so that his own genes may continue on into the future and result in his own immortal legacy. A man is biologically wired to consider his life successful if he has nurtured the woman pregnant with his own child and has raised his own child. He has wasted a portion of his life, however, if the child is not his own…