Structure Of Prayer

They're there, dancing with joy in the rot. Enraptured by the lasciviousness. Lust is satisfied in the mud of carnal gloating and lust. Dishonest pleasures are sublimated in hideous fish, in abysmal shells, in slime of shit. Goats, dromedaries, horses and birds eager for enjoyment endorse the unbridled. Space reeks of sin, of lust. They corrupt the environment with a plague emanating from the darkest side of our being. I stop looking at the picture and make sure I have a few minutes to rest before the bells ring.

*

I'm about to go to mass with a huge muscle fatigue. I ingest two glasses of water that calm the roar of my liver, or at least that is what I imagine or desire. I put on my cassock. I feel purer.

*

The boy has been bothering me with a question that's been bothering me for a while. He forces me to back off until I fall flat on the couch. I encourage him to sit next to me. He agrees, not without anticipating a gesture that warns me not to transgress his purpose. I caress a tuft of hair that slides down his forehead and place it behind his ear, which is his rightful place. I feel the look charged with expectation. I try not to disappoint him and tell him that God is a good and merciful being and that we cannot know him physically or imagine him with the anatomical profiles to which we are accustomed, but this invocation of catechesis does not satisfy his curiosity. I am strong. I tell him the truth, that we must love God and not pretend to know him. He tells me, with a face of defeat and resignation, that God is complicated. I only have life to breathe in the sweet smell of musk that permeates my nose when I take his buttocks off the furniture. I call him. He turns with a luminous look, with that look that incites me to grab him by the cheeks and satisfy my impulses. But I beg the help of the Lord, who can do everything, and then, with renewed strength, I send the boy to my room. I tell him it's a secret. I reveal to him that I know God. I show him.

*

God is not small, although he seems so at first sight. He's distant for a greater perspective on the world, that's all. His gaze, we know, is ubiquitous. Sitting on his throne, his head is crowned with a tiara and on his legs rests the holy book. His back is protected by a long imperial cloak. I can see him now, while Father Misael shows me this peculiar painting. The darkness of the painting makes me afraid. Nevertheless, I resist it. On the horizon, behind the mist that covers the sky enclosed in the concave glass, there is God, and I can see him. I know him now. And I see his smile.

*

I'm preparing to take sleep with the fragrant stench of its back of the head. We have prayed together, body to body, and have asked God never to turn us away from his way, so that we might ingratiate ourselves with his precepts. There is something charged in the air that prevents me from breathing normally. I feel the absurd premonition that I am about to fall into a nightmare from which I will not be able to wake up. Outside the rain has started to beat down, very softly.

*

The morning is cold. The downpour has cooled the environment. I slept peacefully, at peace with my spirit and welcomed by God's infinite mercy. I am reassured to know that the nightmares have finished their work of nightly torture and have given way to a truce. My optimism does not reach the certainty of having defeated them. One part of me knows that I will succeed in this battle against the devil, but another part, the most fragile, shows me the extent of my failure, for at every moment my mind succumbs to temptation and every part of my body breaks the law that my soul demands.

*

I’ve decided to take a bath. I have felt the sensation of impurity in my skin, and not only because of the stench of my armpits loaded at night, but also because of the mountain of procreation that I carry in thought. Before going up to the altar I must be purified. Cooling a little will not hurt me, so I am about to lather my skin. I also rinse my soul with prayers.

*

The winter season is approaching and the signs are being felt with the sense of smell. This can be done by any mortal, but especially by those beings who are better equipped for such tasks. So Tomas, contrary to what the clergyman thinks, knows this better than anyone else. He recognizes as alien the ethereal aroma that distills from the soil near the almond tree. That is why he often marks out his territory. The summer season, already in its end, is defeated by the elemental humidity of the cycles. The geosmin emerges and floods the portal with its ether. The ancients assured that the petrichor was the blood of the gods, the essence that ruled their veins. Today it is nothing more than a striking aroma that from time to time, as long as its fleeting quality does not fade away, causes us slight discomfort, without us realizing that it is and has been, throughout immemorial times, the true sweat of this earth, its sweating surface. Thomas understands this. His nose has not worn out to the point that he is indifferent to the world. He knows something about smells. He has understood something in his long life as a dog. That is why he stops urinating the almond tree and lies down in a strange mystical posture, already defeated by the weather, on the wet leaves that form a natural mattress. His sense of smell has emphasized the sacred condition of the seasons. Now, at last, an elusive cloud provides him with a bit of sunshine that his dermis appreciates.

*

I met an old friend at the market. We had a pleasant, if brief, chat.

*

Mrs. Salome has arrived while I was away. She explains to me, by way of justification, her hardships. I tell her to avoid worries, that I understand the situation and that she should take the week off. She insists on preparing today's lunch as compensation for her future absence. I do not make myself beg. While the mistress is cooking I lock myself in my room and reach for a bottle of wine from the place of my secrets. I start drinking with long sips.

*

The bottle is half full and I leave it on the nightstand without any care. The swallowed wine causes me a slight sensation of dizziness that I intend to expel with a cup of coffee. I implore a bath of cold water, but Mrs. Salome tells me that the food is ready. I swallow the soup with a burning sensation. The heat calms the emptiness of my stomach, the strange discomfort of bitterness caused by the drink. I get up from the table looking at the boy who is eating and go to my bedroom with an intense desire to sleep.

*

I half-open my eyes and the first image I see is that of the world. My drunkenness is not fit to scrutinize the disgusting delights of your garden. I imagine the naked body of the boy with true lust and then return to sleep. When I wake up I notice an unusual position on the right side of the painted board. I guess someone has checked the painting. Mrs. Salome is forbidden to enter the bedroom and has always been respectful, therefore my only suspicion lies in the boy's curiosity. I'm not angry, but I don't like the intrusion either. Then, I feel the pastiness that has stained my breeches during sleep.

*

Fewer people came to church today than yesterday. Nevertheless, my sermons were longer.

*

The last book of the Bible announces a hell full of fire and brimstone as a condemnation for those who betray the Lord's standards. A hell of stenches, of smelly vapors, would be an unbearable torment, even for any soul alien to the weaknesses of the body. I defecate slowly and with a little pain. My sphincter expels a gas that is released in the form of a high-pitched scream. It stinks, but I breathe it in, imagining a tormented mephitic hell saturated with fetid effluvium, and, sitting here, the stench juxtaposed to the imagination incites me to nausea. I barely open the door and allow a little fresh air to circulate, shaking off the miasmas of excrement, the foul air that has contaminated my organism.

*

Tomás sniffs my leg, he has surely noticed the smell of soap on my body after the bath. He starts making nasty grunts. He pulls the fabric of my sleeping suit and tears it, flooding it with his drool. Bad dog. Now I watch him walk away, satisfied with the mischief. I take off my robe and find myself naked in front of the mirror. I can't resist directing a caress to my testicle area. An electric current shakes me. My penis swells into a dark crimson. As I react, I walk away from the mirror in horror. I take another wardrobe and urge myself to forget my desires.

*

The Sanhedrin of the senses welcomes the proposal to betray the soul.

*

I strip him of his shirt with a serenity I don't believe in. But it's my hands that strip his torso. I lay him down with his ass rising up to my face which I push away immediately, instantly blushing. I stroke his back which is sure to be burning with the coolness of the menthol. His lungs can already feel it, I am sure of it, because my hands refresh to the rhythm of the massages. I contemplate for the last time his perfect ass as a dominant young man. I turn him over with his face towards me. I hit the menthol on his pectorals and I take the opportunity to feel his shy nipples that emerge without audacity. The strong smell of eucalyptus penetrates me.

*

This morning, they both sleep with the rumination of the rain lashing the street. Neither Father Misael has had the dream of the knife, nor young Manuel the vision of the beast. Maybe they've gone away so they don't come back. We are on the threshold of a new day. In the center of the city, the rain washes away all the stench from the street of the billiards. The downpour cleans the old tree in the backyard. During the rains, some naive people claim that God is the one crying for all the sins of mankind. The most accurate image would not be symbolized by the divine tears that fall upon the world, but by the sizzling of Thomas's urine that soaks into us, similar to this one, which now comes off the bark of the old almond tree. Be it in one form or another, after all it is from the body of the immaterial God that the liquid that bathes us comes.

THURSDAY

Burning and gelidity

Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra

I am shaken by a burning discharge whose genesis is the occiput, and it exudes partly through my spine. My tendons wake up and force me to stretch the length of my body in the pleasant pain that consumes itself orgasmically in my underpants. I feel how my penis descends slowly, knocked down by the convulsive pleasure of pollution while in my soul a void is gestated that I cannot stand. The cold slips from the open window and swings in the curtain with a languid and consecutive wail. I watch the velvet shudder against the wall, impacting against the window glass, against the frame made of spruce. I feel the breeze slip and sneak in between my armpits, shaking my skin in a gust that ruffles my whole body. I sigh. I separate myself from the interior, maculated by the semen. I get up and pray for the weakness of my flesh.

*

The warmth of the coffee encourages me to leave it. I prefer to take light sips of the peach juice. The boy tells me a somewhat profane story, but I don't dare rebuke him. I just look at him and give him a cold smile. Today he did not accompany me to mass either and I missed it so much, especially when Bishop Pio imposed the blessing. I look at him and I am enraptured by his features, by his carefree look, by the boisterous hair of the morning. I get up from the table in a hurry, trying to dodge my eyes that are turned to him again and again.

*

I've gone down with a chill. Today I will not leave the house or attend to the parishioners who are preparing for Good Friday. I've left certain minor commitments in charge, following the doctor's recommendation. The boy prepares an infusion for me, which I ingest along with the medicine. As he turns around, I can feel the movement of his buttocks in a provocative sway. I surrender to sleep.

*

When I wake up, I see the boy's face. He has kept me company all this time the fever has lasted. He informs me that he has prepared lunch and comforts my body with a hot soup that he insists on spooning into my mouth. Then comes a hard time. I rebuke him for having examined the painting without consent and he answers that he wanted to know what was in it. It is not a question of forbidding him to know, but I think that he should first consult an authorized voice to confirm whether or not he is qualified to know. He replied that he felt he was qualified and implored me to guide him through the painting. After a struggle of pleas and refusals, I give in to the request and allow him to open it. He expands a face of wonder. It is beautiful, he says, but at the same time horrendous. It's our soul, I tell him, or I just think about it. The residual shock of the fever stuns me. For the moment I only want to get away from the boy, to shout at him to leave my room and disappear forever, that God has revealed to me that he is an emissary of the devil. I am overcome by the desire to excommunicate him from my life. I understand that I will do the opposite, because I stand up to him and place a hand on his shoulder and hold it in an intention-laden embrace. What you are witnessing is a paradise, a hell, and this here, I tell you in a magnanimous voice pointing out the central part, is the world. For now it will be enough to see it, we will have time to study it part by part. My body does not resist the impulse and I kiss him on the cheek while I descend my hand into the cleft of his back. His reaction is not one of rejection. Unexpectedly he asks for my blessing.

*

I sent the boy to the market for supplies. I feel the absence and try to fight the desire with a prayer, but being on my knees, the words get stuck in the throat. This time I cannot pray. I get up, take a warm shower, and prepare to receive him as best I can.

*

The boy finally arrives, but unfortunately accompanied by Miss Rachel, a helpful woman at the disposal of the Church, young despite her almost forty years, unmarried despite her beauty. Behind her, an entourage of ladies who have joined forces to pay me a visit and offer me fruits, bought precisely, I imagine, from the beautiful old maid. Tomás greets them with angry barks. I receive them with apparent gratitude, I give them, with the authority they give me, a couple of admonitions, I impose one or two tasks on them in preparation for tomorrow's procession, and I delicately dismiss them on the pretext of my rest. I close the door behind them, with its moldy iron edge and rusty hinges, and I embark on the search for the boy throughout the house.

*