by Max Besora
Chapter I
Thus begins the story of Joan Orpí, indubitably some sort of premonition of his later life of adventures
It is said that while Joan Orpí’s birth was a bit strange, it was highly spectacular, regardless. And if you don’t believe me, listen to this: It all began in the small Catalan town of Piera, one evening of the Year of Our Lord Jesus Christ MDXCIII (if I’ve got my Roman numerals right), when an old, ailing pigeon, wet from the falling rain, flying hither and thither from clouds filled with electrical activity, soared through the trees and sown fields, made three shaky circles around the church bell tower, and floated through the heavens of smoking chimneys in a prodigious final flight, until its wings could take it no further and, finally, amid hoarse glook-glooks, it landed clumsily on the angular sill of a window where, agonizing in horrific pain, it consumed its last moments of life in absolute sepulchral silence.
That window belonged to the home of the Orpís, a family of respectable wealth and notable local pedigree, and inside the room the light given off by three candles revealed spread-eagle legs covered in varicose veins and hair, trembling from the effort of bringing a new soul into the world. Mrs. Orpí was about to birth an infant in such a way that would become legend, and fodder for numerous sessions of rumor-mongering in the town of Piera (at least for the duration of Sunday afternoon).
“Push … ! For the love o’God, Eulàlia, push … !” shouted old Orpí.
“This child be driven by the Devil, my beloved … !” she bellowed, the birth being such great torment that she couldn’t help dire prognosticating.
The woman had flooded the bed with excrement, blood, and other fluids, and was straining her nether regions to get the baby out of her womb once and for all. So loud did she bellow that it seemed the sky would crack and splinter into a thousand shards. Alerted by the hollering, a throng of curious neighbors had gathered outside the house and were pointing their fingers at the window of the Orpís’ home.
“Even me bottom is set to essplode!” she shrieked, her eyes rolling back in her head. “Ay, God’s loaves and fishes … I’m dying hither!”
“Come now, woman, don’t scream so, thy serenade of hurtling and shouting shall bringeth all Piera here!”
“Sssh! Quit thy rubbish talk, Pepet,” ordered the woman. “This birth art an executioner come to take me!”
“Peace be quiet, woman, prithee, any moment now he’ll be out in the worlde, a perfect right genius … wid a moustache andall!”
“And who woulde have thou believe my baby art a boychild, big lump?” asked the woman, pushing.
“Come now, woman … caint ye see we needs an heir to tend these lands?”
“Always with your mind on coin, vile leech! Whilst here I beest dying of excruciating pain! My wish is a girl and she shall be called Maria … hither, thither, and yon!”
“Over my dead bodikins! Firstmost a male heir … it’s the least thou canst do!” countered her husband. “And we shall name him Joan, as my father (who art in Heaven), whether thou liketh it or not! I’ll respect thine pain, at least respect mine legacy!”
“If that be true, then thou oughten warn all those whores of yours since, out of respect, thou should lyest only withe your wife!”
“Darent ye commence that ole song & dance, Eulàlia!” bellowed her husband, feigning indignation. “Let us get this birth over withe … or I’m like to faint!”
“Oh, yea, sure, when I rayse the subject of the bawds ye frequent in Barcelona, out comes the broom and, flish-flash-flish-flash, thou changeth up the subject right quick … ya swine!”
“Eulàlia, cry thee mercy …” said her husband, kneeling by the bed. “Quit gabbering and push … for the love of all that be holy!”
Just then, at the eleventh-hour, the town midwife rushed in. She was in such a rush that she came wearing just her nightgown and slippers. “Let us see if we caint get this here show upon the road, milady!” she barked with a macaronic howl as Eulàlia’s husband crossed himself. But despite the best efforts of that expert in births natural and unnatural, it didn’t seem the child would be born that night, nor that the storm had any desire to wane; quite the contrary, the sky spat out its fury harder than ever, with clouds colliding violently and creating brutal electric jolts that fell upon the earth, cleaving mountains, burning forests, and splitting trees in two. So great was the storm that one of those streaks of lightning fell right atop the Orpí home, hid in the chimney, snaked down like a bulimic cosmic worm and burst through the fireplace into the living room, where it hit a dog in the snout. The electrical charge set its pure canine instinct into motion, and it bit one of the servants who was stretched out on a straw bed; the young man leapt up from the pain and banged into a shelf above him, and from the shelf fell a pot containing two thousand Catalan reals, ten gold maravedis, thirty billion castellanos, forty of Barbarossa’s pfennigs, eight liards, five hundred deniers, five croats, two-hundred pounds, eleven 1/3 trentíns, and a bunch of counterfeit money (plentiful as it was throughout the country in that period), of which one coin went flying and, tracing a perfect semicircle, landed in the mouth of the woman giving birth. A curious detail: throughout this entire chain of circumstances, the lightning’s electrons had transferred from one object to the next when they touched, and the coin the woman swallowed sent an electric charge through her entire body, helping her with the final push needed for her to expel—with a shy “oh!”—the newborn from his maternal cave, whilst the coin emerged from her nether-slot in a wholly ultranatural way.
Plof.
Thus was born Joan Orpí del Pou.
Chapter II
In which young Joanet sees his siblings come into the world, learns to speak, takes a fancy to a word, and has a divine revelation
The curious reader must undoubtedly be astonished after hearing tell in the previous (which is to say, the first) Chapter how highly diligent Joan Orpí came into this world. By now, kind sirs, you may very well have formed a hasty judgment against the author here narrating. However we must demand a bit of patience before a condemnation in saecula saeculorum, and open hearts before the pages ye shall hear forthwith6, withholding judgment for the time.
House Orpí, located beside the market on Carrer Major de Piera, was enormous, and little Joanet, crawling, would lose himself amid the muddle of people coming to and from between that large house and its stables. At first everything was sounds: the clink of the haulers’ bells, the barking of the dogs, the neighing of the horses, the shouting of the dayworkers. Then everything was legs. Then he discovered that atop those legs were people. Then, that people had different faces. Then he learned to differentiate the faces. We could also add that his mother’s wasn’t particularly pretty, but she was his mother. And we can also say that his father’s resembled an irascible owl’s, but he was his father. And we shall say no more on this aesthetic matter.
Little Joanet was surprised to realize that he would not be the king of the castle much longer, since he soon had a front-row seat to the respective births of his siblings. The first, Francesc, was born as naturally as breaking wind, right in the middle of the living room. Their mother heard a Plaf! from between her legs as she dined, and the newborn was already on the floor. The second, Maria Anna, emerged as Eulàlia headed to church for Sunday mass: Plof. The third, Joana, was born just as the first. The fourth, Jaume, slipped out from between Eulàlia’s legs exactly as the second had. The fifth … ah, no, there was no fifth.
Meanwhile, little Orpí learned to speak by imitation, like monkeys do, and those first childish sounds distinguished truth from error, a truth that would always be increasingly more uncertain and lost. When writing, there were some letters that gave him more trouble than others, to be frank. For example, he found it easier to write an “A” than an “R,” as strange as that may seem. There was a reasonable explanation. The letter “A” reminded little Orpí of a house:
The “R,” on the other hand, didn’t remind him of anything, and wa
s therefore harder to learn. In any case, once he knew how to say whole words and link them up with other words, and even write them down on a piece of paper, it seemed that all the mysteries of the world could be resolved. At one point he learned a new word he was terribly fond of. The word was sensual. Ever since he learned it everything seemed to be sensual. When he saw a pretty tree he would say “that tree tis verily sensual.” If he saw a pig splashing around in its own excrement, he would say “all that tis highly sensual.” If he happened upon one man killing another, he would say: “now that tis quite sensual.”
One day his father said to him, “Joanet, why dost thou call everything sentsual? Art thou an ydiot or wut?”
Since the boy was unsure as to how to respond to that question, old Orpí gave him a cuff to the head that sent him facedown onto the ground. Some time later, our young hero swapped out the word sensual for another word he liked even more, strumpet, which he had heard directed at one of his sisters. From that day forward he found everything quite entirely strumpet. One Sunday when Mrs. Orpí brought her five children to church, something highly unpleasant happened due to Joanet’s obsession. Whilst everyone was praying, and it came time for a communal amen, Joanet exclaimed STRUMPET. So loud and so clear that everyone was shocked, all their mouths shaped like Os. The sin did not go unpunished. They washed out his little mouth with soap and gave him thirty thwacks on the bum. After that, the little boy from Piera seemed to have learned his lesson about obsessing over words, because he didn’t open his mouth for a week. His family, seeing him sit there agape for hours, thought the boy had been struck dumb. But after a sennight they saw that his dumbness had been a mirage because a few days later, upon seeing some vultures devour a calf, little Joanet exclaimed: “all that tis verily sensual and quite strumpet!”
His sisters, Maria Anna and Joana, grew up surrounded by their mother and the kitchen servants, while his brothers, Francesc and Jaume, followed old Orpí out into the fields when it came time to thresh the wheat, or to the market when it came time to sell the grain. But our Joan was different. And that wasn’t just a gratuitous conviction but a prophecy, as we shall soon see.
One day, the Orpí family was leisurely headed to the holy mountain of Montserrat—like the upstanding Catalans they were—to light some candles to “The Black Virgin,” as she is widely known. Joanet, who was just eight at the time, asked, “Who be that blacke woman?”
“The Virgin, mine son, the Vyrgin of Montserrat,” answered his father.
“Art there more blacks in the worlde, Father, beyonde her?” asked the boy. “I finde her a tad affrightening.”
“There be many blacks throughout this worlde, mine son … and they feast upon menn! Yet there be but one holy black Virgyn,” declared his father, making the sign of the cross.
As the entire family prayed some very heartfelt Ourfathers, little Joan approached the holy-water stoup, set into the wall of the church beside the entrance. There he entered a small, roundish room filled with ex-votos: crutches left by the lame, wax arms left by the maimed, shrouds covered in dust and mites, and icons of the saints. Impressed by the uncanny look of those prosthetics hanging from the walls, the boy had the stirrings of a nervous attack and, while his little brain practiced cognitive free-association exercises and his body shook epileptically, a celestial light appeared at the back of the room: it was the Virgin of Montserrat, dressed in a freshly-washed blue sheet and with a crown of gleaming light around her head. She spoke with a voice from beyond the grave:
“Joanet! Hark carefull! Twas I which sent the lightning bolt what aided thine mother on the day of your accouchement! Tis thee, Joan Orpí, was birthed for to rule a distant New Land. Thine divine destiny awaits!”
“Caint hear ye, milady. Furthermore if ye came to eat me up, I muss say that I am in disaccord with said culinary policy,” said the boy, who, terrified by so much negritude, had shat himself.
“Whosoever hath told you such a thing?” said the Black Virgin. “Hush thy blathering piehole and heed these instrucktions on how to effect your fate: thou hast but to light three candles for next year’s harvest, two candles to put paid to brigandage, and seven further candles to honor the lord our God who hath wroten thine eternal glory in the firmament. Ah, and lest I forget … thou mustesth eat grass!”7
“But, milady … that be a lot of candles! I haven’t the coin!” said little Joan, scratching his moist ass. “Moreover, I understandest nary a word of what yee proclaimeth. And furthermore, mine father saith that black people, like milady, doth eat menne even though milady protesteth the contraire.”
“Yee art a bastard ratbag! And thou hast besmirch’d thyself!” scolded the Virgin, strict as a police officer, and pinching her nose. “Thy cheek is thy whole face! Many a manne would slaye fer a miracle such as this, yet thou speaketh of the price of candles? Pish posh … skinflint!”
The Black Virgin vanished into the ether, and our hero ran, diarrhea streaming down his legs [insert disgusted facial expression here], to explain the miracle to his mother and siblings. However, no one believed him. In fact, they laughed in his face. When he explained the story to his father, he received such an ass-whooping that our young hero refrained from revealing his divine visions to anyone else ever again. And that brings us to the end of this second Chapter, pleading with our beloved readers, should they encounter some historical inconsistency herein, to please forgive it, for memory is not always exacting but wit will never fail us. And now, let us advance to the third Chapter.
___________
6. i.e. Here the narrator feigns speaking directly to the reader, in a recourse typical of literature of the period, using forms more appropriate to oral than to written narration.
7. i.e. This final recommendation, curiously, is the same one the Virgin of Lourdes gave to Bernadette, in the nineteenth century, in a typical case of divine plagiarism.
Chapter III
In which young Orpí sees a circus show and decides he will become a knight-errant
In those good old days the town of Piera was indeed the most boring of all places in that hemisphere of the (mapped) earth. Since nothing ever happened there, those rural folk took even a fly’s negligible trajectory for entertainment, or watching the cows chew their cud (the latter sufficient activity for the whole family). One day, however, a traveling circus came to town. The bizarre delegation came through the streets playing drums and fifes8 so off-tune that the children who’d come to receive them turned around and ran back, covering their ears. The circus convoy was filled with costumed people and cages with strange animals inside: there was a camel, a bear, and even an orangutan. No one had the faintest idea where those beasts were from, because the itinerant circus people spent their lives traveling from one place to another and collecting the most improbable things.
The circus was soon set up beside the Santa Maria church. After paying their three maravedis, the audience was welcomed into an enormous red tent by a string of outlandish characters performing feats of juggling, and a fat sweaty barker: “Stepeth right up, folks, see the arcane marvells of this w’rlde: Savage beestes of Africa, swashbucklers from the Indies, the whoreson of James I the Conquerer, a wilde issue discover’d in the Pyrenees … stepeth right up!” The people of Piera, wary yet curious about the strange get-ups those circus folk were wearing, gradually approached the tent, where they were received by a midget with pierced ears who immediately charged them the entrance fee.
“Tisn’t cheap,” said one townsperson.
“Eyen sharpe, or thou shalt turn round to discover theyth knick’d your snickerdoodles,” complained another.
Girls and boys, men and women, young and old, all of Piera ended up inside that improvised circus tent. First, out came the animals. The bear had learned to juggle, the orangutan could write profanities on a chalkboard in a lean scrawl, and the camel smoked a pipe. Then out came the players. The supposedly savage boy appeared before the crowd with an acrobatic flip as the master of ceremonies de
clared that he’d been raised among wolves in the forests of France. But actually he was no child, just the same midget with pierced ears who’d worked the door, naked and smeared with mud to look more feral. People started to whistle and shout “whadda ripoff” and “skullduggery!” while the midget stuck out his tongue and gestured obscenely. Then out came a man dressed in a tunic and fake gold crown who assured the crowd he was the last descendant of James I of Aragon. His only evidence was some unintelligible murmuring that the ringmaster claimed was in Valencian, however no one could be entirely sure. Then came a man they called The Fakir, who could fold himself up like a rag doll. First they stuffed him into a box, then they made him walk over a carpet of nails, and then he swallowed a ball of fire that killed him immediately. His corpse was dragged off quickly as the crowd gleefully applauded. Then the ringmaster said:
“And now tis time to introduce one of the lastest of adventurers returnt from the Newe World. Ladies and gentlemen, the authentic hidalgo Hierro Azul de los Llanos Castrados, Kinge and Lorde of a thousand castles and a thousand armies on Terra Firma!”
A rickety, gangly man, who seemed to be starving to death, took the stage. He was dressed in a rusty suit of armor and when he unsheathed his sword, its weight sent him down flat on his hindquarters. The audience all laughed. But the ringmaster was not amused in the slightest and he quickly waved out the princess, a fat dirty woman wearing a pink dress that was too tight in various places. When the princess knelt down to help her knight, the back of her dress ripped open. The audience laughed again. When they were both back up on their feet, they acted out a story of princesses and knights, while another man narrated:
