A Cock-Eyed Comedy by Juan Goytisolo

Author:Juan Goytisolo [Goytisolo, Juan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780872864504
Google: 0ASbZoga5EMC
Amazon: 0872864502
Publisher: City Lights Books
Published: 2005-11-01T13:00:00+00:00

4

Indifferent to my cruel and undeserved adversity, the wheel of fortune injected me via mouth into the spirit of a famous preacher as he was mounting the pulpit in the Toledan church of San Juan de los Reyes while three hundred leagues away the imperial troops subjugated what was too briefly the merry, carefree capital of Christendom.

Much excited, burning with impatience, I, Friar Francisco Ortiz, awaited the moment to denounce to my flock the crime committed with the very holy bride and soul-sister of Christ, imprisoned in the city a few days prior. The exasperatingly slow march of the clock and the lazy round of the sun fanned my desire to gain a martyr’s crown on the cusp of eternal life. In this blind and wretched world that will soon turn dry as hay, in times so full of chaff and bereft of the grain of truth to sustain us, I was driven by the need to bawl out, exclaim and proclaim my faith in that celestial creature, as if it were the last sermon I would give, as if I would perish afterwards, set to suffer every possible torture for the true and good health of my soul.

I spoke, I spewed against those who act like wolves and not shepherds, who deprive the world of the light they do not deserve to behold, who persecute pure, saintly souls, preside over pyres, confiscate property with bastard diligence and cupidity. From on high, as if on a sudden, swirling tide, I surveyed the anguished, disapproving faces of some of the faithful, the restlessness of the brothers in my order, the scornful, contemptuous gestures of those cut to the quick by my massive truth. What else could one expect from men who, attentive only to pomp and circumstance, refute divine illumination with enfeebled argument, dismissing it as illusion and vain fantasy? How could one make prevail over that (inquisitorial pack the celestial graces of a most pure virgin whose spiritual, pretty breasts nourished me? Wasn’t her girlish, impish (innocence and simplicity perchance consubstantial with a supernatural degree of perfection, seraphic wisdom and prudence? God had revealed to her at the age of three the mystery of the Trinity and, with its forgiving sustenance, she had never committed mortal sin. Possessing miraculous gifts of healing through the mere application of one of her garments, with tact and subtlety she helped troubled souls abandon the base and the vile, ate with great difficulty and only after much beseeching, spending days, nay, weeks, without so much as a trickle or doing the necessary.

The clamor surged and the ocean of the world threatened to engulf my safe haven. I loved her, really loved her, a love pure and clean, averse to carnality and contingency! Her intercession and prayers cured me of the fuxu seminis that soiled my nights. Though exempt of all guilt, I lived in perpetual affliction and sadness, in a cruel war against the filth sent forth by the involuntary swelling of my veins.

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