— Let’s hear him out, Schultz said to me. There’s nothing like travel for getting an education.
— My dear brothers, continued the priest. By the grace of God, I was the parish priest of San Bernardo, in industrious and proletarian Villa Crespo.
— This gentleman is from Villa Crespo too, said Schultz, introducing me.
The priestly figure observed me briefly and then shook his head:
— No, he rejoined. He’s too young. I’m referring to the idyllic era in Villa Crespo, before it received the colour of Israel.
— Colour and odour, Schultz blandly interrupted him again.50
The priest smiled through his tears, and continued thus:
— Gentle souls who listen to me, the Villa-Crespian flock of yesteryear was the one Our Lord entrusted to me, that I might watch over it, care for it, and lead it to the eternal meadows. To Him must I account for each and every one of my sheep when their hour arrives, as did He Himself to his Heavenly Father. “Tui erant, et mihi eos dedisti, et sermonem tuum servaverunt.” In the vernacular: “Thine they were, and thou gavest them to me; and they have kept thy word.”51 And now ye shall see, my brethren, how I lost the Lord’s sheep! Among the seven capital sins laying siege to man and obliging him to do battle, the one that fell to my lot was gluttony, a gross vice which like no other lowers man to the obscure level of the beast. If it be true that every vice has its demon, the demon of gluttony had enthroned itself in my innards such that, the more I offered him, the more he demanded. The demon was always awake and orienting my energy, my memory, my understanding, and my will toward food, at all hours and places. In my parish there were innumerable sick people to attend, widows to console, orphans to succour, and needy persons to help. Nevertheless, far from approaching those abodes of tribulation according to the injunction of Canonical Law, I frequented the houses of magnates in Villa Crespo, above all on those festive occasions (weddings and baptisms) that traditionally end with a lavish spread. There I could be seen realizing such gastronomic feats as disconcerted not a few burghers, who gazed in astonishment, forks suspended in mid-air. To be sure, the fasts imposed by the Holy Church on her ministers are not excessive. Nonetheless, such was the ingenuity I devoted to sophisms, cunning arguments, and ways of cheating those fasts, that I could easily have written another Summa Theologica.52 I said mass only at dawn, racing through the Missal toward a toothsome breakfast. Oftentimes, in the late afternoon, the penitent souls awaiting my absolution behind the grill of the confessional received nothing more than the snores and burps of my laborious digestion. The rest of my day, which was a fair amount of time, I dedicated not to reading the Holy Scriptures, but to rummaging through rare and beguiling cookbooks for some unique recipe, some Byzantine delicacy I might concoct on my stove; the aromas wafting from my kitchen throughout the neighbourhood provoked mockery among the sated, blasphemy among the hungry. Thus began the scandal in the Villa (“Vae mundo a scandalis,” the Lord has said).53 My blindness notwithstanding, it did not take me long to notice how my flock was dispersing, how the faithful were being lost, how even those who just yesterday would seek me out now avoided crossing my path. The day came when, if they ran into me, the women rushed to touch wood, the children to touch iron, and the men, by way of a preventive spell, surreptitiously touched their testicles. Alas, my brothers! It was as though they saw in me the devil himself and not a priest ordained according to the order of Melchizedek.54 The worst of it was that the hosts of error, aided and abetted by my terrible negligence, began to set up their rostrums in my parish and to judge the Lord by the unworthiness of His servant. Ay! It was then I saw how the Lord was being crucified a second time in Villa Crespo! For the second time, before my eyes, He was insulted at the corner where the tannery stands, scourged and spat upon at Lombardi’s sawmill, crowned with thorns in front of the stable of Ureta the Basque, nailed to the cross on the banks of the Maldonado…
The priestly figure’s speech ended in a huge sob. Burying his face in his hands, he wept soundlessly for a few moments. By and by, he pulled from his soutane a green handkerchief and used it to staunch his tears and noisily blow his noise. His pain was so sincere that even Schultz seemed to hesitate, as though turning over in his mind a question of justice. But then the old dandy, who up to that point had hardly intervened in the conversation, gave vent to his fermenting anger:
— Very well, he said. We’ve just heard the extremely vulgar stories of two “gourmands.” It seems to me there’s some justice in their being thrown into a hell such as this — what incalculably uncouth cuisine, upon my word! I still don’t know what someone like me is supposed to be doing here, a man who has turned cooking into an art with a soupçon of science or a science with a soupçon of art.
— Pardon me, Schultz said to him. Do I perhaps have the pleasure of speaking with a “gourmet”?
— You said it, the old duffer replied. And I assume the inventor of this inferno’s laughable architecture must be some kind of bungler, a moron incapable of seeing the nuances distinguishing one case from another. If I had the chance to go back up above for just a minute…
— What would you do?
— Nothing, crowed the old boy. I’d just call up Macoco Funes, the senator, and have him close down this clandestine den of iniquity.
Schultz was about to give him the response he deserved and maybe uncover a third story, when two enormous Cyclopes came striding down upon us, single mid-brow eyes beaming left and right as though in search of something in the semi-darkness. The one in the vanguard soon spied the three WC heroes and with amazing ease plucked them from their thrones. He tucked the priestly figure under one armpit, the old fop under the other, and with one hand held Don Celso in the air.
— Back to the grindstone! he told them. You’re not gonna sit on the john all night long like a buncha broody hens!
Then he noticed Schultz and me observing him with curiosity.
— Seleucus! he grunted to his companion. What’s this pair of patsies doing here?
— Rubberneckerth, for sure, lisped the other Cyclops in response. Leave’m to me, Chrythantuth!
In other circumstances I might have laughed out loud hearing those names of Attic sonority applied to such characters. One was a cyclopean low-lifer from the suburbs. The other put me in mind of a day labourer I’d seen tending to ten heifers roasting on spits, on that day we lost the elections and the frock coats took power.55 But Schultz raised a head radiating authority and turned to face Seleucus:
— You be quiet! he said. I’m the captain of this ship!
— Oh yeah? Seleucus guffawed, looking down at Schultz from above.
— He’s a patsy! insisted Chrysantus. Seleucus, give him a black eye!
Fury had taken the place of hilarity in the countenance of Seleucus:
— Leave’m to me, Chrythantuth! he shouted. I’ll make thith crowbait gallop!
— You be quiet and do as you’re told! Schultz ordered him again.
— Crowbait! yelled Seleucus. Lemme at’m, Chrythantuth! I’ll put the reinth on him!