The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico Garcia Lorca Ascends to Hell (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) by Rojas Carlos & Grossman Edith

Author:Rojas, Carlos & Grossman, Edith [Rojas, Carlos]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2013-04-18T04:00:00+00:00

THE TRIAL

The bolt slides and the same soldier who tried to hit me with his musket (“How do you dare, wretch? In my presence!”) opens the door. Startled at first, then immediately terrified, I recognize him by the childish dewiness that still fills his eyes.

“Move, you son of a bitch, the governor wants to question you!”

“The governor? … ”

“You’re lucky, you damn queer. The governor is as good as a saint. If I didn’t have orders from him to bring you to his office in one piece, I’d squash you like a scorpion, you fucking red, and we’d save the bullets we’ll shoot you with.”

“I want to see Pepe Rosales! Pepe told me yesterday I’d be released today! I want to see Pepe Rosales!”

“We shot Pepe Rosales at dawn for hiding you. You’ll see him soon in hell!”

I guess that he’s lying, not even stopping to think about it. I read it in his twisted smile and dewy eyes, while he takes me by the arm and pushes me toward the open door.

“No! Pepe’s alive! He was here yesterday and swore that today he’d take me to his house!”

I’m frightened by my own voice, the resonant tone of my reply. (“Sleep well tonight, my boy, and tomorrow we’ll all embrace you at home, and I’ll kiss your cheek if you promise not to pinch my ass.”) I believed him and last night I could sleep for the first time since my arrest. Dreamless sleep, as if I had been born blind or had just lost all my memories. Sleep indifferent to the screams of the tortured that previously had driven me to bang my head against the walls, like an enraged minotaur. Sleep, though it was on the floor with my arm for a pillow, since there wasn’t even a cot in the room they gave me for a cell.

“Yeah, right, whatever you say.” My shouts seem to have moderated his obtuse cruelty. Through my panic, and in a kind of revelation, I imagine a mountain village where this boy, now armed, endured taunts, stones, and gobs of spit. “We’ll play the call to arms, we’ll surrender our weapons to you, and you’ll leave here under a canopy, like the Virgin.”

“Pepe’s alive! Pepe can’t abandon me! He’ll be back right away to release me. You’ll all have to answer to him!”

“Yeah, fine, we’ll answer. Get moving, you fairy, or I’ll break your back with the butt of my gun. Look at those hips, like a little whore from the Albaicín.”

Again the corridor and the door to the governor’s private office. Again a beardless soldier standing guard beside it. Again the unexpected copy of shadow play that dampness drew on the wall. The man with the toothless smile speaks for a moment with the sentinel and rings a bell beneath the stain. Without waiting for a reply, he pushes me and lifts the latch.

“At your orders, Excellency. I have the detainee you asked for.”

Behind a carved desk covered by thick glass

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