Vulgar History
Now and again a shy voice passes by asking for the sick
man and . . . afterward departs, saying: God will provide!
Misfortune has settled there, like a shadow . . . If the
neighbor dies, misfortune shrinks down into the hard and
concrete form of a cadaver . . . And on another day he will
be buried: and the shadow will already be gone.
Miró, «Señor Vicario y Manihuel» (Años y lenguas)
I
«Poor boy!»
«Poor parents!»
A group of old relatives (chiaroscuroed by their witches’ beards) held vigil over the dreams of the sick boy.
«Poor parents!»
«Poor boy!»
In the long run, the monotony of fingering the rosary tired them out, distracted them. They tumbled down a slope of nosy prattling now. Night in the chamber. Above the dresser-drawer, an eager desire for a miracle lit the subtle hope of a lamp. The flame lifted the prayer of intercession until it formed an image. The fire’s rising soul illuminated slightly the saint’s garments and forgot, in the darkness, the bed, the panting, the distress. The mother, official sufferer, clasped her hands in a silent lament for her dying son, who was already a man, and who not long ago was fine and happy, and now he was dying, he was dying with no cure. Some blow, too many blows, as a child!
«Poor boy!»
It is a pause in the run of fragments, homage to the most important belief. They are related witches, fair in their words; they have too much experience with all of these moments. The lamp trembles (oh, no, only a little bit of air through the crack, only a little bit of air). The sick boy’s forehead burns an officious hand.
«Such a hard worker.»
«There wasn’t another like him!»
The doctor arrived, despairing. The rector. He said grace. Who else? Ah, enough, enough, you know! Lady Rodesinda, the mistress in charge. Pale, thin, she draws close. Is this Lliset? Poor woman, she collapsed! The old women, admiring, compassionate, supported her with reverence.
«She loved him so much!»
Preterite, of course, imperfect.
«She was his godmother.»
«And she saw him born.»
«What a great heart!»
Recovered, Rodesinda embraced the mother; crying, she made a helping gesture. Coins, not many, jingled. Everyone praised the generous impulse of the mistress.
«The kind woman!»
«She can’t stand to see suffering.»
«May God pay her as well as she does the wretched.»
Some heterodox voice whispered:
«She’ll bill them at the close the year.»
They objected:
«Sure. Whatever comes after, hidden, does not erase the visible present of this moment, now. The woman is a saint!»
The excessive praise ran in voluptuous droplets down that excessively thin and virginal back. She collapsed again. They carried her out.
II
Another day:
«How do you think the boy is doing?»
«Terribly. We’re not coming out of it.»
«Yes, that’s it,» a philosopher said. «You’re born alone, live alone, and you die alone.»
«And you must save or condemn yourself alone,» the senior rector reminded them.
«Too much work, dammit.»
Above, the witches stayed up with the dying boy.
«Poor boy!»
«Poor parents!»
And finally there came to pass what everyone, for so long, had awaited. The boy died, and they had to bury him. Spring afternoon—a pretty one. The funeral procession descended mountain paths that were beginning to be disguised by flowers. The coffin was carried by hand, and those carrying it cursed its excessive weight. The entire town followed. They stopped at the small plaza, in front of the church. The rector sang in poor Latin. Everyone became emotional from not having understood him, and prophesied that it would have one effect or another. All of a sudden, a boy escaped the watchful eye of his mother and set to playing marbles at the side of the coffin where it rested in a stretcher, under a canopy of incense, for the liturgy. The boy’s startled mother judged these actions to be a bad omen, and taught the boy a lesson as he shrieked and broke the gathered sorrow. The other mother, losing her wits, yelled out:
«Yours is going to die too, you know!»
Her neighbor cursed her and distanced herself. Die? Hers? Not hers, she wouldn’t allow it. And she kissed him furiously, already defending her actions. The retinue continued, arriving at the cemetery. Tears, an Our Father, heading back. The men stopped at the tavern, and the father treated. Everyone drank to the health of the deceased.
Mama Real Lylo Vesme
It was a long, narrow, and rather dark living room. We sat down. We were stacked up in an uncomfortable heap. We adopted the poses of people watching science films. Some couldn’t deflect the anguish. Others had already been there and they warned us about what we would have to see. «Silence,» our Professor demanded, and went on instructing us through an extremely long lecture. At the end he dictated to us the conduct to follow before what we were to see. «And now we can begin to introduce the infirm.» The Director of the establishment gave the adequate order. «They picked them,» Pere Màrtir Passerell, who was one of the veterans, warned. «They show the most presentable ones. But I have a good time with it, I come every year.» «Greet these gentlemen,» the Director meanwhile suggested of someone who had just entered. «Good day, he, he!» said the subject, a sort of eunuchoid. «Pau is always happy,» the Director assured. «Isn’t that right, good boy?» «He, he!» Pau confirmed. «Listen closely to the question,» the Professor shouted at us. «What is it that you like the most, Pau?» «He, he!» the eunuchoid enunciated while licking his lips. «I like them . . . » Thus, tranquilly he expressed the enormity of things. «Ha, ha, ha!» we laughed, unanimously. «What’s so funny, eh?» Pere Màrtir Passerell asked. «I’m telling you, I come here every year.» «Shh!» interrupted the Professor. «These deviations in sexual instinct constitute, write this down, one of the possible characteristics of these pathological cases.» «He, he!» shouting himself hoarse, the eunuchoid said. «Take him away,» the Director said decisively. Pau disappeared and was replaced by a thin man. «I present to you all General Bum-Bum,» the Director said. «They finally put him away?» we, the naïve, asked. «They’re confusing me,» the personality protested. «Today, I am the inventor Carboni.» «This infirm man,» our Professor documented for us, «suffers from personality disorders. He is, depending on the day, General Bum-Bum, Carboni, or a modest writer.» «He’s not a disturbed person who entertains,» stressed, sotto voce, the companioning Passerell. «I’ve seen him as all three and he is not at all pleasant. If he feels like an inventor today, he’s going to bewilder you with trigonometric formulas.» «Sine A, Cosine B,» revved Carboni the inventor. «Enough,» advised the professor. «And now you will all witness an extremely curious case,» he continued. «A woman who seems in her appearance as normal as any of us. She argues well. In reality we don’t know whether she is or is not sick. We have her under observation.» «They already had her there last year,» Pere Màrtir Passerell informed us. «The rigor and logic of her mind are excellent.» A highly distinguished woman entered. She greeted us courteously and explained that she had been there for a year; her husband had had her locked away. That she and her husband had never understood each other, and that she suspected that on more than one occasion she had gotten in his way. That she was fine. That, if she remained locked up, she would perhaps end up not fine. That she hoped we might feel sorry for her. That she enjoyed our visit, despite finding the group a little large. That she hoped we might not forget her. And that we might free her from her prison. «She’s not demented,» we, the novices, said, moved. «Well,» countered the more clever among us headed by Pere Màrtir Passerell. «It’s very suspicious that she speaks so coherently.» «Agreed,» we agreed. And we went over othe
r illustrations of amnesia, abulia, echopraxia, echomotism. «Ha, ha!» laughed Pere Màrtir Passarell. «Boys, you’re about to hear some screaming,» he promised us. They had introduced an old man. «How many years old would you all calculate this old man to be?» the Professor asked us. «Octogenarian? He hasn’t even turned fifty.» «Fifty!» we were amazed. Our surprise satisfied the Director, the Professor, and the veterans. «This man suffered a formidable attack of apoplexy. He was a strong, good-looking man, and was transformed into this. He passes hour after hour immobile. Suddenly, he begins to utter some words, always the same, rather low, in a confusing tone, and goes on raising his voice, little by little. He repeats what he’s saying until he reaches the point of exhaustion, and it’s not at all easy to get him to be quiet. If you all had heard him, he would have impressed you. Eh, Francesc?» «Mama real lylo vesme,» he exhaled, in an extremely low voice, that wreck. «Mama real lylo vesme, Mama real lylo vesme, Mama real lylo vesme, Mama real lylo vesme.» A monotonous, obsessive song. «Lylo vesme?» we weren’t familiar with it. «Ha, ha!» laughed Pere Màrtir Passerell. «Right now it’s difficult to understand, but he’s only saying that his mother, who died years ago, really loves him.» «Mama real lylo vesme, Mama real lylo vesme, Mama real lylo vesme,» Francesc bellowed, like a storm. «Ha, ha, ha!» pondered Pere Màrtir Passerell. «Each academic year I come here, and next year, as usual, there’s no way I’m letting myself miss this,» concluded, while choking with laughter, the humorist Pere Màrtir Passerell, with whom—as with many other of my counterparts, both women and men—I had long ago pierced, without realizing it, the threshold of an arid road between high and unique barriers of imbecility and crime. And in my conscience, the thought—unbent in the western wind facing the wall—was itself already completely alone in the emptiness; stupid perversity, stupid malevolence.
Prologue to the Devil’s Ballet
«A woman in love provided me with the opportunity of meeting the demon.» «What arts did you make use of, warlock?» asked Melània, who wanted me to initiate her. «Needle, mud and a little bit of blood, sinister weapons. I won’t tell you, my love, the crime that has allowed me to cross your door,» I said to her. «Gutruda came to find me.
“He hosts a dance and presents a ballet, a ballet of hypotheses. The Six dames en noir will be there,” Gutruda warned.
»We walked along a path surrounded by abysses.
“Throw stones. For the dead,” Gutruda recommended. And I threw hundreds, thousands, of stones; such was the multitudinous number of dead there! The spirits buzzed at our return.
“That’s enough,” Gutruda ordered. “Unless you’re proposing to organize a fateful revolution with them.”
“I’m not strong enough,” I responded, flattered. “First I want to meet him.”
»We reached a trifurcated crossroad. Gutruda traced a circle.
“Who summons me?” a voice said.
“Worship,” Gutruda ordered. We bowed down.
“Don’t reveal yourself, Prince, in some bloodcurdling medieval form,” I prayed. “My modern sensibility wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
“Ok,” the voice conceded.
“Nor,” I dared another demand, “come adorned in a tuxedo with a high hat and an Egyptian cigarette between your lips. I’ve never been able to take you seriously like that, it makes me laugh.”
“Dammit!” said the voice, slightly anxious. “How, then? I’m going to the ball and I have to get dressed up. You have to know I can’t—I’m not allowed to—choose too many outfits.”
“He seems broken up about it, don’t get him overexcited,” Gutruda admonished. “If he’s inclined to have it rain my clothes are going to be ruined.”
“He wouldn’t dare,” I said.
“Oh, he’s quite the beast,” Gutruda said.
»Lightning on the horizon.
“Fine,” I conceded, in order to calm the conjurer. “You can show up in a dress coat if you’d like, Mr. Devil. How does that sound?”
»A skillful piece of shoddy stage machinery helped a middleaged man rise from the ground.
“Thank you,” he said to me meticulously. We shook hands.» «I’ve seen this demon act more than once, some years ago,» Melània cut in. «He was played by one of the Barrymore brothers.» «You’re right,» I granted. «Those brothers had some type of exclusive run.» «Carry on, » ordered Melània. «And we shook hands.»
«“And now,” the devil said, highly refined, “hurry, all of you. We’ll be late to the ball, and the Six dames en noir are very punctual.”
“And the seventh?” I asked.
“Never seen her. Never stirs from a mysterious seat of honor in the kingdom of night,” the veteran Gutruda said.
“The seventh is a boy who’s lost his eye,” sang the devil, full of literary remembrances. Meanwhile, the path had become populated by demonic fauna: toads, lizards, slugs, bugs, snakes.
“Day after day these animals grow more numerous,” observed the devil while walking with caution. “They’ll get to the point where they won’t be any fun for me at all, especially the snakes. I get so tempted by them!”» «Such a scatterbrained wisecrack is unworthy even of you,» Pulcre Trompel·li said dismissively. «Talking about the devil is dangerous, although not nearly as dangerous as talking about God,» sermonized Father Silví Saperes. «Snakes scare me, too,» said Melània, tying together the broken thread. «Go back to the road you traveled and introduce me, at the party, to the Six dames en noir. How were they dressed?» «Later. What I’m telling you is only the prologue,» I warned. «Well that’s enough for today, eh?» Melània pleaded. «You’re the boss,» I said, relieved. «Don’t play with fire. Not even with imitations,» benevolent Senyora Maria Castelló counseled from the high, distant peak of her death.
My Friend Salom
«Yes,» said my friend Salom of Konilòsia (an observation for the good Frenchman: that exotic land that lies between Rarotonga and the Sea of Dreams). «Yes, I’m happy now, but it cost me.» He explained to us the process behind his battles. «I was born,» he explained, «forty-five years ago in a great city in Konilòsia. You all, being from a normal country, will with difficulty understand what happens in that remote region. The Konilòsians, people of a glorious history, otherwise like the glorious histories of all people, tumbled and still tumble down an endless slope. They’re distrustful, cheap, and pitiful. They treat spiritual as well as material shared heritage with the greatest possible indifference. Now they believe themselves an inferior people in every way, now they adopt an attitude of ridiculous arrogance. The Konilòsians never read anything ever, know nothing, are interested in nothing, but God save you from bumping into an erudite Konilòsian—and there are some—because you would see how he mixes Goethe with an anthology of nonsense. They are envious and stingy, they praise the powerful and the mediocre, they tolerate neither talent nor independence of character, and any snobbish foreigner discovers from time to time some forgotten and secular Konilòsian value.»
Having arrived at this point, Salom took a small pause, then suddenly continued:
«As I told you, I was born in Lavínia—a great city, yes, a great city—and within the nationalist focus of the Lavínians, those who formed a separate group within Konilòsia. They have a different language and all of the defects of the Konilòsians, augmented. The Lavínians work in commerce, under a coarse and fundamental exploitation of manufacturing and the law, which fattens and stuffs our abundant, smart, and clever fauna. The Lavínians are the rich of Konilòsia.» «Don’t digress so much,» I warned him. «It’s true, pardon me,» Salom conceded. «I’ll look to limit myself to the thread of the narrative, which carries me again to Lavínia, where I spent my infancy and my youth. I was studious, always surrounded by books. People began to look at me askance, praising me in public but thinking something entirely different to themselves, as is the tendency in Lavínia.
“So, what will the good kid become when he grows up?”
“A lawyer, like his fa
ther.”
»And I graduated with a law degree.
“Now on to practice,” my father said.
»But the lectures had turned my brain upside down.
“No, papa.” I responded. “I don’t like law; I’m thinking to reach higher.”
“You mean you might go into commerce?” my progenitor asked, somewhat hopefully.
“No, I want to reform Lavínia, Konilòsia, and all these things.”
“You’ll ruin yourself, lazy,” my father said.
»I smiled smugly. And I ruined myself.»
Salom was silent for a moment and then continued:
«Yes, I ruined myself. Me, the redeemer. For ten, fifteen, twenty years, I swam against the current. Do you know what that’s like? Do you know how the fight gets drained out of you by the wickedness, the hypocrisy, and the ignorance of Lavínia?
“You and you and you all, etc., you’re all so and so and so other, etc.,” I accused them severely.
“Who do you think you are, why are you saying this to us?” they responded at the beginning. “Antipatriot!”
“I like the indignation. When all is said and done you’ll correct yourselves,” I said, very happy. “But that doesn’t erase your defects.”
“Your mother!” they later said. And they started to whistle at me and mock me.
“Ai, modify yourselves, you’ll condemn each other before history, you’ll die as a nation if you insist on continuing this way,” I predicted to them, rather discouraged. “Correct yourselves, educate yourselves, do you hear me? Perhaps you’re all already dead?” Silence, breakdown. Silence and breakdown. I’d buried myself.»
Salom thought about it and after a moment resumed the anecdote.
Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth (Catalan Literature) Page 7