Structure Of Prayer

SUNDAY

Darkness is the blindness of thoughts, it is the thunder of silence. Darkness is a plague that turns into dizziness, a caress of nothingness, a cold that pierces the bones, a bitterness that swallows with tears. Darkness is a condemnation to the fears of the past, an uncertainty to the calamities of the future, a nebula that compacts the senses. The darkness. And suddenly, my children, you can contemplate the world. I emerge to the vigil as if excreted from the abyss of the womb. I feel reborn though aware of the deception of my senses. I perceive my morning smell of liver stench adhering to my muzzles, impregnated in the pillow cloth or simply integrated into the atmosphere of the room. Meanwhile, the world remains there. I stand up and the glare coming through the window blinds me and forces me to cover my face. I have woken up from an uneasy sleep that my soul has endured not without shocks. I observe almost in amazement, as if it were the first time, the dryness of the walls of the room, the sadness that distills from its old cracks, the grey photos held in contrast in the colourful frames, the painting of a world enclosed in a glass bubble that may be a protection so that some external danger does not hurt the surface again, or it may remain as a containment so that the evils embedded in that devastated land do not germinate, so that no curious Pandora will ever uncover its stench again. In the background, behind the world, I observe once again the image of God. Closing my eyes, I pray. Beloved Father, deliver me from all sin, for yours is the kingdom of earth and heaven and your designs are pure and unquestionable, cleanse my soul from temptation and bless my day.

I get up and feel the bitterness of the wine established in my entrails, somewhere in my tissues. I slide into the bathroom where the mirror shows the sediments that stain my eyes and that I push away with my fingertips, making the process cause me a shudder. I shake my face with soap and water. The toothpaste rinses my mouth, which gives off the morning stench that I am used to. I excrete with pleasure and notice on the front of my underwear the accumulated splashes that give away the viscosity of the morning and almost daily substance of rare radiance. Oh, Lord, how beautiful and cruel dreams are. Inside a dream is the only space where I can show myself as I am.

The newspaper shows him the same news every time. But he is struck by a headline on the center page that shows the latest statements of the Holy Father. He reads the content printed in small letters and examines the full-color photo that has been placed next to the review. Adorned with a cape and leaning out, as is tradition, over the main balcony of the Saint's Basilica, he announced the eve of the major week. Father Misael, we say his name now, prays and prepares for mass.

I can't isolate that image. It's in me and it doesn't leave me. How much I suffer before the altar in the moments of this memory. How I bear that torment at the moment of spouting the worn-out slogans of each mass that the parishioners receive as new words. How much I resist seconds before God's blood and body purify me. And all because of that image. It is reticulated in me and dominates me, it is a curse arising from the underworld that bends my spirit, and I can only have recourse to the safeguard of the Almighty who illuminates my path.

Sitting at the table, putting aside one of the vegetable dishes, I consider that I have prepared an excessive lunch. I contemplate with undeserved attention the cleanliness of the furniture, of the floor, of the now dust-free shelf, of the imitation imperial porcelain that sparkles with an unusual brilliance and shows the naked cherubs with their pale spectral faces. Thomas, disciplined, blows from below, making an imitation of a greeting with his tail. The boy sips the orange juice that spills in drops from the corner of his mouth and smiles at his clumsiness. I only eat the salad and half a glass of the fruit juice and put aside the fish that I don't want, as I have put aside the rest of the food. My right eye has again secreted eye booger that I remove with modesty and a little annoyance, since the boy has directed a face of astonishment to me while commenting on some passages of the Bible. Thomas follows me into the kitchen with a martial step, imploring with his panting some satisfaction that will mitigate the emptiness of his stomach and prevent him from running his spit.

I'm going upstairs to the bedroom. I try to rest. It's no use. I return to the dream that weighs on me like a sysiphic rock that when I wake up I think has been discarded. The darkness. And suddenly the recurring image is shown, repeating itself over and over again as if I had my eyes inside a kaleidoscope whose refractions will take me at every moment to the only image without distortion. I pray to God that I may be spared this torment and that my spirit may rest from these shocks. Cyclopean ears split by the edge of a knife. It is the image and I know where it comes from. From my memories of the painting in my room, there is no doubt about it. From the permanent and never-tiring evening study that I often make when contemplating the painting every time I allow its doors to open. It is a bastard imitation, and almost ruined, of the great painter's famous triptych, which I paid for with my life's savings. We must admit that it is a futile object in comparison with the original, especially in art, despite being a faithful copy, of equal proportions. I contemplate the world. I allow the doors of the nuanced work to open on the oak board and I look at another parallel world: that of paradise, the garden and hell. I marvel as I do every evening. The painter's art is so flawless that I shudder even through a bad interpreter. I frequent the fresco in the evenings, exploring the gears of its constitution, trying to decipher the alchemy that brought about the now devastated paradise, the art of demiurge that forged hell, and pretending to know, because only by knowing are we in a position to reject, the path of perdition that leads to this Calvary.

I leave the dream with the aching body, with the slumber that blushes my flesh and incites me to sin. I have the feeling that I am no longer the same, that I want to escape into some kind of exile without worrying about carrying on my forehead the stigma that gives me away to men. To flee from God's gaze, so that his eyes no longer rest on me, and thus be able to satisfy my delusions. The sacrilegious thought comes to me every day. I pray that the devil will depart from me and I feel that God is reanimating me in faith, that he is taking Luzbel away from my flesh which is beginning to grow cold. And I pray, I cannot do anything else but beg the heavens to be able to escape the trap of my body, to appease the perfidies that I plot in my felony, to flee from the inclinations towards which my senses are tempted. I resort to some introversion that saves me, at least for the moment. I pray and prepare for mass.

The boy crosses in front of my door and stops for a moment, bending down, putting some damage in his slippers. His white pajamas make his flesh transparent and give his figure the appearance of a voluptuous ephebe. But in his face there is innocence, chastity. The artificial light makes her cheeks reverberate with a pale pink that flashes in the half-light of the entrance. He is completely unaware of his powers of seduction, of the dangerous attraction he produces in his wake. He stands up, looks into my room and in his eternal shyness tries to say goodbye to me with a bow that seems distant and annoying. With a gesture I encourage him to come closer. I give him a blessing and mark the imaginary sign of the cross over his eyes. I descend my hand almost transformed into a fist at the height of his mouth, seeing his lips caressing my fingers, contemplating his face close to me and succeeding in making a tremor invade me, since by the aspect of his features he resembles the face of an archangel. I take him by the shoulders and on this occasion I make the sign of the cross with four kisses that I implant on his forehead. I have no choice but to let him go and go to prayer.

Young Manuel has placed his trust in the words of Father Misael. Every evening, he invites him to pray the major prayer with him. He instructed him in the mystical art of prayer, the spiritual interiorization that, the priest claims, will purge his soul, leaving him absolved of all sin to become a purified child of God. And Manuel manifests his unconditional surrender. The reverend has imposed the dogma on him. He has shown him that faith is the most important thing to be saved and that one must trust in the designs, always inscrutable, of the Lord. And the boy believes him. Sometimes, when he kneels in front of the bed, the father stands right behind him and squeezes his hands next to the boy's. It's a reinforced prayer, he whispers in his ear. In this way God will hear us better, you as a son and me as a father, he mumbles to him each time, almost inaudibly, manifesting the secret that he does not want him to auscultate the small carved image of the macerated man of the cross that hangs over the head of the bed. On cold nights Manuel finds the company of that double prayer pleasant, but on hot days it seems unbearable, he cannot tolerate the firm, sticky body attached to his buttocks, the longing, warm breath expelled by his father in prayer, and the words of farewell when the doughy kiss on the back of his neck is sealed. But now, kneeling, resting his elbows on the mattress, the boy is praying before the effigy of the prophet and the father has not arrived.

I'm not getting up tonight. God has strengthened my faith. God is my shepherd, my guide, my light and my path. Hear my prayer and let it be strong, do not let it fall into the darkness of sin, O beloved God, O beloved Father.

What a horrible dream, for God's sake. Save me, Lord. Watch over me and protect me, Father. Watch over me, Lord. What a horrible dream. Help me, Lord, I implore you. I will not sink back into the satisfactions of sin. I swear it. Because I can't stand this darkness. My eyes can't stand this darkness. I walk, I grope my bed, less warm without my body. I feel the wardrobe, hard as the blackness that suffocates me. I can't find the way out that will take me to the light, Lord, lead me to that escape. Don't let my foot stumble again. I feel a wall as cold as my hands, frozen in the cold. Guide me, Lord. In vain I continue to cry out. This house is so sad and so lonely and so big that Father Misael can't hear me. Nevertheless, you Lord, beloved Father, who hears the cries of all your children, guide my legs, welcome them into your light, bring me out of this darkness and I promise to be faithful to the end of my days. I promise to offer up my faith every morning. I promise to do the penances of your divine command. I trust in you, Lord, beloved Father. Your word will be a lamp to my foot and a light to my path. I know, Lord, I trust in you completely. Lead me into the light. Lead me to your light.

The door opens and the boy, barefoot, calls to his father's room. He has had to cross the long purgatory of the corridor that separates the rooms as if it were the endless threshold between hell and paradise.

And she comes to me with her teeth shaking and chattering, icy, ghostly.

I had a horrible dream, Father. I dreamt of a puppet in the teeth of a huge beast. The freak was to be feared. It had enormous red eyes and it looked at me while it held me in its mouth because that puppet was no other than me. How it looked at me. It snorted like a bull and its slime was very liquid and fell down sticky, disgusting. Everything was dark. But his eyes, oh God, his horrible eyes.

"Come in, beloved son," I say. And I welcome him into my bed, and I smile within me at his childish fear of the dark.

Come in, young man. Enter, triumphant in your Jerusalem, where you are acclaimed.

One more night Father Misael will not be able to fall asleep, while leaning out of the window, with the boy asleep on his bed, he wishes only for a glass of wine, not the sacred chalice that metamorphoses into the blood of the Lord but the one that palliate the contained nerves and the repressed desire to be another. Below the city sleeps. In the distance it sees no window with light and realizes that his sleeplessness is infinite, that it cannot be compared to anyone else's. It is a solitude without end or interval. He recognizes the fact that he has no one like him. The world would not understand. It will not understand. God, in His infinite wisdom and with His omnipresent gaze, would not understand. It will not understand.

MONDAY

The chest creaks and a miniature earthquake born from the bronchi widens the thoracic cavity, germinating in the rings of the trachea purring an unconscious and collective response invoked by millions of bacilli avid for substances, convulsing, in its path, pharynx and larynx. The microscopic avalanche flows and spreads its halo with the trepidation of the entire epiglottis. The tiny cyclone reverberates in the pituitary membrane and distributes the alluvium between nose and palate, causing congestion in the sudden burst of snoring.

I spent the whole of the night in vigil, imploring mercy from heaven, listening to the whisper of my jaculatory prayers mixed with the clatter of the boy's breath. The sound of his swollen chest has been another incentive for my vigil. I'll call the doctor first thing in the morning. On each occasion when I was seized by the desire to contemplate his anatomy resting on my bed, I submitted to an incredulity stimulated by my desire to remain a child of God. Follow in the footsteps of the prophet and do not give in one iota to the instigation of evil. I want to serve you Lord and defeat the temptation of the devil and tell him that man does not live by flesh alone. He tries to tempt me, to take me away from you, O beloved Father, but I will submit exclusively to your commands.

Thomas sees shadows where there are none. He makes them up. Sometimes, on sunny summer mornings, he chases lizards, little animals that sneak in between the stone walls of the garden, in the crevices of the mud bricks in the backyard, in the cracks on the edge of the windows, where those vandalous vermin come out to get some sun. Thomas rebukes them with his old voice, with his thick grunts charged with slowness and scant impetus. Though on many other occasions he barks with unusual energy, as if to assert his former authority as a domineering dog, his sentry-like disposition of a part-time Cerberus lurking in the wake of his weak antagonists, making sure that no one usurps his domain. Right now he jumps with a sudden boldness that has taken who knows where from his dusty anatomy and warns the vermin that he has surely sought refuge in some branch of the old almond tree where the animal performs stalking pirouettes while barking and barking. But usually it is his tired imagination that outlines, in his colour-blind fantasy, exacerbated by his worn-out olfactory acuity, the demons that always torment him. I tell myself, after observing him, that we are not so different after all. Simple instinctive animals succumbing to the whims of our nature. All this if it weren't for our soul. Thank you, dear God, for having given us a soul.

I celebrated the Eucharist without the boy's presence, and although the charitable hand that waved the incense was not absent, it was not an experience similar to those I perceive when he is present. Not seeing him for a couple of hours was more tormenting than having him lying inches away from my skin.

The doctor's verdict has been final. It's a bad cold that breaks the young man's defenses, he tells me in a deep voice, smiling as usual, but with a couple of days of rest and a good dose of painkillers his health will be back. We both walk to the door, whose hinges scream in a rusty voice, and are shaken by the hearing damage. After the mishap the doctor turns solemnly, submissively bends his gaze and asks for a blessing. He draws a cross in the air just at the level of his face, then bids farewell with a salute. The boy goes back to sleep, breathing in and out with difficulty. I feel his forehead to explore the pain, but all I get is a tremor in my body and excessive perspiration flowing from my hands.

I did some clerical work and had short, otherwise uninspiring interviews with the parishioners. Free of my responsibilities, I walk along the paved promenade on the river bank that connects this small town with the neighboring village, hit by the breeze that stirs up a deep whistle, like every occasion, the loop of my hairstyle. The end of the summer brings beautiful murmurs. The swallows encourage the well-known annual exodus towards the west in a pilgrimage that has a lot of regret, since in their scatological anarchy the birds, which during this time travel precisely in the central park area, decorate cars, sidewalks, squares and passers-by with an unparalleled excremental feast.

It is precisely now that I walk near the central park that I can perceive the choral trill of these tiny birds hooked on the electric cables, a collective chirp that is hindered for brief intervals by the thunder of the transports that circulate unceasingly along the avenue. I continue my walk along the most discreet street I find in this aspiring city, a dead-end street for vehicles that has become my obligatory itinerary every time I go shopping. Everything here is serenity, without the noise of engines and horns so annoying. And suddenly there is a roar from the billiard room that has been inaugurated in previous days. Insults in ever obscener tones rumble out of the mouth of a young man who is not afraid of the strength of his enemy, who is proud to show off his syncopated tattoos that encourage him to be labelled as a convict from some remote prison. I opt for a quick retreat and turning on my heels, with my back to the hostilities, I can hear the dry blows that shake the flesh. I go out to the main avenue. I walk around trying to forget the boy. Neither the bustle of the cars, nor the howling of angry drivers with their toe on the pedal, nor the rain of trills that falls on me like a crock, nor the recent street conflict, can make me stop thinking about him and stop my torment. I try to distract myself by devising a peaceful conclusion to the quarrel in the alley. I reach my destination, but without having shaken off my shoulders the huge stone that is tormenting me.

The market is a fire of sounds. The shouts that impregnate the crowded environment of vendors eager to negotiate the fruits, vegetables, grains, food in general, give a touch of euphoria typical of places frequented by the common people. As always, I go to the fish area and ask for my usual Monday supply. Here it is, Father," says Leandro, the salesman who has known me for years, "and he wraps up the still epileptic fish in sheets of old newspapers without any consideration." As I leave the market I hear the police sirens complaining with their scream, threatening and persuading the indiscreet ones who crowd the scene to recreate their curiosity and judge with their eyes. As I pass near the alleyway of the battle, I can see the big troublemaker being handcuffed and taken into the patrol car, not without resistance. Of the intrepid young man I detect no trace. I walk away imagining once again a far-fetched conclusion to the story of the bar fight. The image of the boy falls on me, the memory of his voice that throbs in my eardrums like a choral society of angels. I understand that this is a greater blasphemy than the insults of the great man with the tattoos. I say a few prayers on my way home.

Mrs. Salome parades the broom in front of me without any concern, always guarded by Thomas. She has adapted herself to my presence on the sofa, to my customary prostration which plunges me into trances of sensations that she would never suspect. At times I understand that I am the one who is used to the shadow of her anatomy moving around the room. I sit up with tedium and go to my bedroom.

Music penetrates my sensitivity and imprints a mark with its melodic alchemy. I close my eyes and it transports me to another more pleasant world, to a place demarcated by endless joys, to a paradise made of all the flowers, tulips, dahlias, agerates, chrysanthemums, orchids, lilies, where being lost is a blessing. It is the only way to escape from the incessant and fragile thought.

A rales are shaking the young man's body. The force, which compresses and violently releases the diaphragm, emanates from the lungs and bursts hard, slipping roughly through his tongue, piercing the vocal chords that transform the impulse into a hoarse, cloudy sound. The cough materializes in the sputum that crosses the throat and ends in a trip from the window to the garden. The boy coughs long, with pauses that barely give the burning tonsils a rest. At the same time, Thomas' impetuous barking floods the house despite being in the courtyard, and you can tell that his watch has not been fruitless, as he has surely detected some slippery bug, or perhaps it is simply a fable of his aged senses.

The recurrent ringing moves the silence as I listen behind me to Mrs. Salome's shoes sliding down the tile in a hurry and stopping at their destination to give way to the plastic sound of the headset being lifted. The tinkling of the table service utensils rises to the ears of Tomás, organs tired but more awake than his almost lost sense of smell. Perhaps I am exaggerating and he has come to the table because of the smell of fish. The boy rests. I carefully chew the texture of the food. The salty softness delights my palate and I hear the annihilation of some thorn between my teeth. Mrs. Salome removes the dishes. She informs me, very formally, that today she must leave earlier due to a domestic mishap, due to which she will have to be absent for a couple of days. Seat in a confirmatory gesture.

I open the triptych after examining the collapsed world. My gaze falls on the right side which is impregnated with complex illustrations. Could hell be such a noisy place?, I wonder, could it be an infinite scream that makes the brain and the guts explode and then incites us to pick up our rubble? Or are all these musical instruments dyed in the paint really soundless and is hellish silence the fate of heretics? Hell is not the sweet howl of silence, that is for sure, it is the torrent of crackles that melt to bend the soul. That is why this wretched one is embedded in the strings of the harp, that is why this other wretched one is sacrificed on the giant lute. Then I think of my damnation. I scrutinize this sad sodomite impaled by a flute as the initiator of a long line of sufferers and it is as if I heard his torment, as if in some enigmatic way his fictional pain was transfigured into complicity within my intestine and made me remember the horrors of sin. I contemplate the man who is embraced by a pig in a nun's veil, and it is as if I had been introduced into the picture, for I feel the stench of the obscene whispers in the constant ruminating around me, within me. I urgently close the doors of this terrible spiritual world and the image of the earthly world appears, a landscape that seems to me to be more horrifying. You are full of sin, world. Protect us, God. Save me, God. I'm preparing for mass.

Hail Mary, most pure. Conceived without sin. I have sinned, Father. Tell me your sins, daughter. I have had thoughts of lust. Last night I saw him almost naked and I desired his body, I desired it with intensity and passion. Is that so bad, Father?

The priest listens and suppresses a sigh of complicity. It is the same story of every believer, partially disfigured by a slight nuance. It is desire. The sinful, abhorrent desire. At the end of each rite of a similar nature, Father Misael will add the appropriate formula and express it as he is doing at this moment, with the most normal intonation, after having heard all the intimate paraphernalia that a confession of spirit implies. May God, the merciful Father, who reconciled the world with himself through the death and resurrection of his Son and poured out the Holy Spirit for the remission of sins, grant you, through the mystery of the Church, forgiveness and peace. And I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. In the confessional, there is an amen loaded with relief.