Juanita la Larga: a Novel

Chapter 36

Chapter 36 C arried away as I have been because of the current of events, because of the importance that I attribute to them, and because of the rapidity with which I want to narrate them, I’ve neglected chronology. It’s vague and confusing, and I should fix it a little. Nothing is easier. Suffice it to say that the day of Don Paco’s flight happened to be Palm Sunday. Since Don Paco wandered about all that day and the following one, it turns out that he returned to Villalegre in the wee hours of the Tuesday of Holy Week. Such are the preoccupation and enthrallment of all the inhabitants of Villalegre during that week that nobody would have noticed either Don Paco’s disappearance or his return if he had not been such an active and remarkable person who was ordinarily involved in everything. What would not have become known, not even in normal times, were the reasons for his departure and his return. Jealousy remained buried in the most profound silence, kept there by those who caused it and suffered it—by Don Andrés, Juanita, and Don Paco. As for Antoñuelo’s crimes and the means that Don Paco employed to remedy some and frustrate others, there was interest in keeping them quiet, and the shopkeeper and his wife, the only persons interested in broadcasting them, were prevailed upon to keep them quiet. It was known only that Antoñuelo had come back beaten up, but notwithstanding all the commentary in the town, no one guessed the reason and very few suspected who had administered the beating. That time of year was the least propitious for the ordinary people 188 Juanita la Larga 189 of Villalegre to pay attention to any incident, however extraordinary it might be, of the real life around them. General attention was wrapped up in and suspended by the astonishing symbolic-dramatic enactment that was going to take place during four consecutive days, the theater being the entire town, with its churches, squares, and streets, and the actors being half or perhaps more than half of the men, and the other half being spectators, along with all the women and children and not a few strangers. The Holy Week processions begin on Wednesday and end on Saturday. Having seen them in my childhood, in another town where they are very similar to those of Villalegre, I retain the most poetic recollection of them, which explains why I imagine that people who condemn them lack esthetic faculties or have blunted ones. Even the peasantlike roughness of some of the incidents lends a simple charm to the enactment of which I speak. Perhaps there were incidents or episodes in said enactment in which the sacred and the profane, the serious and the amusing, and the tragic and the comic clashed somewhat. Vigilant and discreet bishops have undoubtedly done the right thing in suppressing these discordances or instances of improper behavior, but the essential part of the enactment, which consists of processions and floats, continues to this day and it would have been a shame to suppress it—it would have been “lese popular poetry.” As I see it, even in correcting, remedying, and perfecting what is done, although I don’t deny that things lend themselves to improvement , you have to watch your step. There can occur, if it’s acceptable to use a literary analogy, what occurs with a piece of writing in verse or prose when the author, out of a desire to polish his style, revises, reworks, and saps what he has written and leaves it withered and faded, with neither spontaneity nor charm. It is important, moreover, in order to understand that spectacle and grasp its deep meaning, to dispense with refinements and ideas of luxury and sartorial exactness, acquired in richer and more popu- lous cities. Only in this way and by reflecting on it carefully does one perceive the sublime and beautiful nature of the dogmatic truth that shines underneath the veil of the symbol. One must not be put off by the tartness of the rind if one yearns to enjoy the sweet food that the rind guards and holds for the spirit. The enactment is not limited to offering the people a representation of the Passion and Death of Christ and of the redemption of the world, but in a certain sense...