From what I've deduced after a week of convalescence, Pepus put me in the 4x4 and took me out of the car some distance from the Cafe. 1 don't know how, but 1 don't think he was too gentle because my clothes were all covered with mud and weeds. And so 1 woke up in the morning on the Vallvidrera highway with a terrible headache, with pain when 1 breathed, blood in my mouth, my teeth altered for the worse and, in general, an impressive resemblance to Saint Lazarus. 1 felt like job and I didn't like the role, so 1 decided to go back home. It took me three hours to get there, an enriching Crossing of the Desert, an illuminating Road to Damascus, a fruitful Mystic Revelation. Animam pro anima, oculum prooculo, dentem pro dente, says Our Lord Jesus Christ, and I made this evangelical maxim mine and when my soul and my body were restored, I went to steal the boar rifle that Papa had hung on the wall in Cerdanya, in an area where no one has ever seen a boar unless it's braised with scallions or stewed with chocolate. 1 say steal because once 1 was there 1 remembered that Papa had sold the house six or seven years ago. Regrets aside, 1 decided that 1 couldn't let the trip go to waste and also, the guy hadn't changed the lock on the door and, on top of that, his rifle, a real Swedish FR50, had a telescopic sight, so if anybody was to blame, it would be his grievous negligence. And the new owner was hiding the box of ammunition in the same place where Papa had hidden it. So l loaded the rifle with his bullets and myself with patience, searching, searching without haste, thinking God will provide, thinking that in the Gospel according to Fripp the Lord says, Do you not see the birds, how they fly and fornicate untroubled, dammit? In this way God protects and watches over all his creatures; how, then, can you think he will not protect you, Quiquin of Barcelona, you who are his favorite? Inflamed by this faith, I searched, inquired, and finally found the perfect site, the right place to do what 1 had to do, between the top floor and the roof of the ideal building, in the stratum called No Man's Land. Wow, the third or fourth variation, an imitatio in four voices, what a wealth of ideas. Why was Fischer unknown until now, God? Why did the Holy Fisherman hide from us the essence of his art?
A whole day inside this dovecote full of bird shit and dead pigeons and a filthy, absurd stink, with an additional problem, which is that 1 have to bend over all the time and sometimes 1 stand up without thinking and smack myself on the back of the head, which 1 think is bleeding. But the thing is that the magical and camouflaged opening to the Holy Dovecote is directly across from my target. It's the Lord's will and for that reason I've baptized this Sacred Dovecote with the name of Truth, though some call it Here and Now. Another defect of the Sacred Dovecote is that it's fucking hot inside. But if to find this perfect hiding place it was Lord's Will that first I had to neutralize the doorman of the building, who rudely and insultingly insisted on knowing where 1 was going with that shotgun, the fact that the find has had to overcome these obstacles makes it even more valuable in the eyes of God, in the eyes of Humanity, in the eyes of History. 1 can hardly move and every once in a while my legs cramp, but 1 praise the Lord for showing me the Site and for being able to ignore the inconvenience first with absent lovers, absent lovers, absent lovers, a cassette tape with nothing on it but Neal, Jack, Me, and now the seventh and last variation of Fischer the Saint, which will be with me until God says Enough… Hey, look, finally, shit! 1 chose right! God finally said Enough; what I've been waiting for for eighteen minutes and twenty-nine seconds: after so much trouble, finally, nosy Jane has stuck her head out, all jittery. She just couldn't wait. I'm not going to give her a second chance. Okay, be still, honey. Done. 1 just hung a well-deserved red medal over her heart. I hope her gum won't end up in the wrong place, poor thing. Honesta mors turpi vita potior. Amen.
I'm going to try and include everybody in the cast, oh Barcelona friends, especially Bosnians, the homeless, Norwegians, old people and Communists. I'll be here as long as 1 can stand it and the sweat doesn't make me close my eyes. And I'll set aside the last bullet, to erase my memory book Here and Now. 1 already said it a minute ago when 1 began this Second Epistle: horresco referens.
Ballad
orka stopped smiling when they took away the only thing she loved, her son, a hulking boy in his twenties who still drooled and who hadn't been able to learn to read because of the twisted connection between his eyes and his head. But he was good enough to go to war and they took him.
Zorka often thought about her Vlada and she would cry bitterly when she imagined a thousand bullets piercing his empty head, or godless and soulless soldiers making fun of him because he was always smiling and showing the unpleasant hole in his mouth. Zorka got into the habit of sitting in the dining room, the cloth with the crowded flowers spread over the table, her hands on top of it, her gaze fixed on some spot of light, letting the hours go by remembering her son's idiot giggle. One afternoon her memory got away from her and she thought about Vlada's infancy, before anyone could say that he was a little short on words and ideas, and she still hoped to bring up a normal child. And her thoughts went even farther back, to the first days she'd lived alone, because a runaway horse had killed Petar, the admirable Petar Stokovic, the strongest man in the village, and life had left her pregnant with Vlada and open-mouthed in astonishment. And she remembered the time when, still a maiden, she was the pretty girl from the Black House and her dour brothers managed the property as best they could and she asked nothing else of life. Zorka of the Black House remembered these happy things to forget, for at least a few instants, her sorrow over Vlada's laugh, which grew sillier and sillier as time went by. And in this way Zorka's days seemed shorter.
As time went by and her thoughts were so much in the past, she forgot to talk with people and started living on wine and salt cod so as not to have to cook, not to have to do anything, to have more time to meditate on the son taken away by godless and fatherless soldiers. Every day, she would go out in the middle of the afternoon, raising dust by dragging her tired feet beyond the last houses to contemplate the road down which they'd taken him. And she would stay there until the end of the day, when the shadows grew long and people started saying, There's Zorka, it's time to start thinking about supper. And the neighbor women didn't dare make conversation because her glance had grown so sour.