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Falsetto The authorities have bags under their eyes and practiced voices for communiques: We guarantee the best solution on the spot. Which spot? The pudendum? God already took care of that, covering it with hair. My son was a good boy. He would never have killed himself like the police said. I touched his head; it was all broken, a token of their guilt. The witnesses vanished, lost their teeth, their tongues, lost their memories. I lost my son. ". . . He greeted the rabble, speaking to them of the Kingdom, to those in need of cure he restored their health." Hard words only for liars, legalists who harness on others the heavy bundles they themselves would not so much as touch . . . Oh, great shriek that I long to shriek, hiss that would leave me empty. Certain hues, tamed birds, a yellow house with a gate and flowers thrill me, but I can't enjoy them. I've got to preach the Kingdom. I'd like a country place, a wisp of a farm, but Christianity won't let me, Marxism won't let me. Oh, great shriek in the face of palaces churchly or otherwise: DIVIDED WE FALL, UNITED WE STAND! My swimming pool is not for recreation, said the Pope. I have no intention of being a prophet, said the Bishop. What thick rope, what a full pail, what a fat sheaf of bad things. What an incoherent life is mine, 53 what dirty sand. I am an old woman with whom God toys. Along with rage and shame my appetite remains unshakable— fatty meats, anything floury, I nibble vegetables as if they were carnal encounters, I am afraid of death and think about it at great length as if I were a respectable, serious, prudent and frugal lady-philosopher. If someone will join me, I'll found a political party, Pll overthrow the government, the papacy, bulldoze all the rectories and institute my dream: across a plain, innumerable, the friars descended in their hoods like brown birds, peacefully, searching for a place. I walked with them until they came to a big house. Where they found a big stove, a big table, and they all went inside and made themselves at home, scattering about the house like true brothers. 54 ...

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