Raising of Padre Araujo

The Raising of Padre Ara?jo
A Metaphysical Killing

The application of justice to, and the solutions of, some crimes are,
and always will be,
outside and above the bounds of all social institutions. Indeed, these
institutions are often the chief offenders. These crimes are the crimes
against the mind. If we have suffered one of these crimes it is down to
us, and us alone, to carry its burden and, either to endure the
suffering and the demise it entails or to rid ourselves and be free of
its affects. In the latter case, it is, in short, the true application
of justice. The lack of such a pure form of justice is a stain on what
we call society which is not so much interested in justice as in its
appearance and so, I suppose, reality and appearance is very much the
essence of my story.

The Way Back

Take the journey back I was advised. Return. Look back. By whom? I
cannot recall just now, but that is of no importance. Go back, right
back to when the idea was new, when it was fresh and in its prime, and
when the affects were fully felt. Only then can you catch it, catch it
and kill it. What is it to kill an idea? It is a metaphysical act. It
is a metaphysical killing. It is the response to a metaphysical crime.
Is it then different from a real killing? Oh, it is a real killing. As
real as you can ever get. To call it metaphysical is not to say that is
refers to some fanciful arena of being over and above what goes on in
the here and the now. On the contrary, it is the most proximate of
experiences which has a vital bearing on the way everyday life is
lived.

I turned it over in my mind and in the end was prepared to take the
advice because I, quite intuitively, saw the sense in it. One idea with
its accompanying emotional effect can only be overcome by another more
powerful one. I knew that also from somewhere and believed it to be
true. The weapon for killing one idea is another more powerful idea but
first one has to track down and isolate the unwanted notion, corner it,
cut off its power supply by the application of one's own power, every
element of it.
To destroy an unwanted, troublesome notion means confronting it with a
notion that is positively more powerful. But this is not as simple as
it may sound. We have to determine which particular ideas are more
powerful than those notions that inhabit naturally the language of our
being but whose nature it is to destroy the soul upon which its own
being depends. As part of us they exist but their impetus is to
non-existence. By allowing it to continue to exist as part of us we
invite our own despairing extinction.
And, the process itself of disposing of those killer notions is
problematical. Ideas themselves cannot exist by their very essence as
individuals. They come and go as a group. They give pleasure or pain in
relation to the pleasure and pain given off in other ideas. And they,
the notions that hurt us, hunt in packs then withdraw to anonymity. To
perceive one, good or bad, is to perceive a series of related ideas. It
is a maze, a web, and entering this world can lead to serious mental
confusion that is threatening to life itself.
Catching and killing are therefore two different acts. That is why it
is tempting to live with the idea, tolerating its discomfort, knowing
that it will be an uninvited but intermittent visitor. The pain may be
intense when it arrives but that may be preferable to losing one's mind
in an outright attempt to dislodge it. But the justice of the task
should determine our response. Often, it is not merely the idea that
needs to be disposed of, but the source of it, the idea at the root of
it.
To go back, from one perspective, seemed a considerable distance but
from another no distance at all. To actually have the idea demanded no
travel. That was the problem. Its nearness meant that its appearance
could always be expected. Its arrival often came in the cloak of
associated notions out of which it would spring to create havoc and
pain transforming the sufferer from a state of relative well being and
control to that of a being unsure about the possibility, or the point,
of persisting at all.
Yet the idea in all its original, hideous purity was, at the same time,
and in essence, somewhere else entirely. Always, apparently out of
reach. This is an intuition. This is how it is seen at a certain level
of understanding, a more precise level of understanding. An
instantaneous idea that needs no analysis to arrive at. It is simply
there in all its glory, a unification of everything that is true about
a certain thing. There is no need to think or talk it through to make
it more precise. Quite confusing to the normal train or tendency of
thought but that is why these notions are so problematical.

Together
Together we lay on our backs inside the sheets touching only at the
shoulders. It was a quite deliberate minimal touch. It was a touch that
declared our mutual presence, our affection whilst also allowing the
freedom of the flesh not to feel imprisoned in some hot and human
embrace.
I knew a man once who, in naked intimacy, always required me to wrap
him with my arms and legs and press my lips to his head. It was nice
that he wanted such real closeness but when it escalated to the status
of uncomfortable clamminess and he still urged for a greater and
greater, tighter and tighter bond, it was nothing less than mental
suffocation with its accompanying physical aspect. He desired love but
in truth he loved desire. His desire did not arise from any active
essence but was merely his basic passions at work, driving him through
hope and fear. This is what I saw in part from the beginning and had an
immediate loathing for it even though it took time to fully see it and
feel its negative effects and finally to express it. It was his
weakness of spirit that I hated, his unwillingness to affirm himself
and not depend on some other source of affirmation.
The expression of this weakness was ultimately too much for me. To pull
away from him in these clinches, even to the smallest degree, even to
shift position, he regarded as a rebuff to his affection, a
pronouncement of my displeasure through my unwillingness to reciprocate
this fusion of beings. In those moments it could not have been clearer
if he had asked me outright was I displeased with him. And those
moments increased as my awareness of his unfitness for love grew. His
continual need for reassurance was evidence of his immaturity. I
quickly grew tired of it, it sapped my spirit and eroded the energy in
my limbs leaving me limp and edgy and in the end I departed that whole
scene, him, his friends his family and everything that reminded me of
his life. I departed, not merely, I have to say, because of his need
for such terrifying closeness but that this manifestation, I soon
realised, indicated something more dangerous, a movement towards
violent jealousy and domination on his part. In short, it was painful
and debilitating and I detected a hatred maturing in me that I hated
not just him but myself for being associated with him. .
The bed was also warm. Our bodies were warm. Our minds were warming.
Undisciplined early morning thoughts reared up out of clouded, sleepy
notions and demanded attention and attention they got. That brief
period when thoughts have free reign can be absolute pleasure indeed.
Or, can be pain of an unbearably powerful penetrating kind. For us, at
this present moment, it was pleasure. I could feel it for us both.
There was no sense of agitation. We simply basked in joyously
unthreatening notions. For him always, it seemed joyous as he never
mentioned pain nor showed a sign of it. He never seemed to worry or be
disturbed. His natural demeanour was a relaxed smile, a glow, a
glistening eye that administered a kindness to the observer who
immediately knew they were in the presence of a contented soul. And,
his early morning smile of inner joy continued to grow throughout the
day. He never exceeded a composed pace in mind or body, it never
mutated into ill temper or annoyance. He never wavered beyond the mean,
was never rigid with anger, neither did he err on the side of casual
indifference. He was serious but his seriousness was always controlled
by a higher sense, a sense of total perspective, whether real or
imaginary. He seemed to know what it would mean for the spirit to
exceed his own emotional dimensions one way or the other. Was this
natural or educated? Was it hard work for him, did he restrict the
surge of emotions or were those emotions simply non-existent? Was he a
creature simply born to well being? I wondered and wondered about these
minute aspects of his behaviour. It was a source of amazement. My mouth
was at times, metaphorically, wide open.
For me, it was all so different. This early morning experience was
uncomfortably capricious. Nervous agitation prevailed over the pleasure
I wished for and, at that moment, felt. And the moments of pleasurable
numbness were declining. In the evening the anticipation of dawning
pain would bring on the pain itself when the dawn came.
Here, at this unguarded, uncensored moment the scraps of mental
phenomena, whatever their kind, hold centre stage. Both the mundane and
magnificent dance together in front of a mind incapable or unwilling to
restrain them. They exist together in no apparent logical relation but
their relations are so much stronger than their logic, rather they have
a special logic or force that unites them. Insights of real power and
clarity leap in and out of being but are often, because of their source
in relaxed thought, dismissed later as fanciful, illusory, unreal. But
they still have their affects and are real enough for that reason. We
have all been influenced too greatly by the myths of scientific
rationalism - it gets everywhere - `that tells us that a thought to be
true has to have its reality verified in an external object. Whatever
that means.
Back here with us, there is a desire to be bodily at rest. The body
expresses its contentment by being perfectly still. It floats. It
ghosts. The mind becomes aware of itself, it thinks and thinks of its
thinking. Bodily movement, it seems, is destructive of this pleasurable
process - though not of its painful counterpart - and it is a signal
that the process is under threat. Motion simply expresses the ideas
that urge us back into the world. And movement inevitably comes. And
then the dancing of the mind stops. The order of social reality demands
it, that mysterious order that is generated in and around the mind. It
soon reasserts itself, brings into conformity loose ideas and what we
call normal living and thinking begins. Discipline is introduced, the
body stiffens, the mind is harnessed by matters of tidiness and
economy. Each thought is to be confined, chained to another, of
singular expression, transcendence is denied it. That is the nature of
them, that is the nature of it. They have a place and cannot be found
in unregulated communion.
And the body tags along as it must. Being a perfect physical aspect of
the mind, it slips into its own designated mode. It initially becomes
restless. It desires distance, separation. The desire for distance and
space is popularly regarded as a need for freedom. I cannot see it
being any such thing, but the urge for this is so strong that we always
seek it. It becomes a quest without a possibility of achievement for it
is mistaken in its basic understanding of our condition. "No man is an
island" is the true perception of our state of being. Freedom can only
be achieved by bringing minds and bodies together, allowing compatible
ideas and impressions to merge. We are not causa sui existences, but
dependent on the nature of other finite modes. Our happiness and
freedom consists in being able to see ourselves as individuals whilst
at the very same time realising that our power to be individuals is
limited by our limitless universal inadequacy to be apart. The world of
things is all there is, it is all there will ever be, but the sum of
the parts is, from one perspective, a monstrous deficiency. Our search
for well being, everyone's quest, is the overcoming of this deficiency.
Yet, not every coming together is a reward. It can be, and nearly
always is, a blow to our quest for freedom. Our coming together must be
like the pieces in a jigsaw, it must be the right fit and not all
pieces fit together.
Now, we moved apart in a mutual movement relieving ourselves of that
important touch. This movement to apartness was a total act. I mean,
here the body moves and the mind registers a thought, the mind
registers a thought and the body moves. This is not at all causal in
the linear/temporal sense, it is simultaneous, two aspects of the same
act. It is all too easy to think of the body as a receptacle for the
mind or the mind as a mere generation of physical movement.
Understanding it thus, in either way, reduces the pleasure of the
perception of our performance. There is the possibility that we can
view ourselves sub specie ?ternitatis. And this, if achieved, would be
real pleasure indeed. There is the being and the thinking about being
we may think. In fact, they are both one and the same thing. These are
the thoughts that inhabit the still mind. They may resemble that which
is nonsensical to the analytical reasoner. They may even conform to
what we know as pretentious. But in reality the pretension is to judge
our free ideas as not worthy of a second thought.
Between stillness and movement there is a point when the mind has its
most intimate thoughts tempered. The censor now enters the arena. I
began by feeling disturbed, unhappy, the anguish building every day for
no apparent reason. The moods of misery became longer and longer.
Calmness was displaced by insurgent edginess, impatience. From a
disturbed feeling without explanation, there was reflection of the
disquiet, then to some form of expression of it. It never reached a
state of panic. There was an overall physical discomfort but no
pounding heart, no shortness of breath, no choking, sweating or
trembling. Maybe subtle manifestations of these but never obvious.
There possibly could have been in another mind but, I knew that this
would not have been complementary to my relationship. I could not
thrust this sort of behaviour on anyone, especially someone I loved. I
could see him smiling in response to it but it would not have been my
way to test him with it, to drag him down with me. Better to get up and
go. No, in my case all of that physical overspill was kept in check.
Mood was my problem, varying degrees of ugly mood, the staring
silences, the still sadnesses. All determined by a recurring, quite
determined personal interrogation. I placed myself in the dock and
questioned myself;
"What is it that drags you down and holds you down?"
" The idea of him present." I answer.
"What is it that weakens you?"
"The idea of his presence." I answer.
"What is it that destroys your endeavour to act?"
"THE IDEA OF HIM PRESENT!" I shout with full affirmation. But it is a
shout without volume, a silent shout contained within the head that
thought it. It represents a problem and a desperate attempt to isolate
and exterminate it. There was evil at work and fear of greater evil to
come. HIM? Where was he in reality? This drives me to the brink of
madness. Madness being this thinking on thinking on thinking. Where
does it lead? Not to action. I am in and out of the world and often out
of reach of people. Their communication is simply collected in my
unconscious and waits and waits for attention which often never comes.
I'm unable to function as a thinker of thoughts, as a teacher of
thoughts that I had hoped to be. Now, I do what is appropriate to my
level. Something that allows me to drift in and out of the
daydream.
This point between stillness and movement then passes and the world of
full activity and then restrained thought is established.
"What are you thinking?" my lover Michael mutters in a sleepy whisper.
Our movement had instigated in him a train of thought that could not
have existed when we simply lay there with our shoulder skin
converging. Now he had slipped into the other mode - though not quite
as far - as I had. He had clearly picked up my agitation even without
the aid of the exchange of words. It was in my movement away. In my
parting he could detect a mood, as I could, as anyone could who had
intimate relations with another, by just the speed of a movement, the
manner in which the movement was executed, the pattern of breath. I had
pulled away, in such a way, that it prompted that question, "What are
you thinking?". It meant "What is the matter?". And his smile said, "I
am here with you." This was not merely a vague first thing in the
morning enquiry, it was the precise pursuit of a particular problem
that was exposed the moment I moved. Like ripping a bandage from a
gaping wound.
"Nothing" was my reply. My usual frustrating reply.
"Nothing", of course, meant everything, everything that mattered and
that could not be given over in an adequate reply. That which simply
could not be spoken. I said "Nothing" and at that moment my mind filled
with everything, like air rushing into a vacuum. Experience is not
mirrored by exact verbal expressions. The particular nature of a human
condition, viewed in terms of its problems, its uniqueness, is defined
by this inadequacy of verbal language. We look for precision where
there is only vagueness. We search and search for ways to say what has
happened to us expecting to find adequate and exact rendition. We
settle for something much less and then think that this really was the
experience, only later, at least sometimes, to see that it was not. The
word can engage us with the beautiful, it can also be the devastating
deliverer of cruelty, it can provide us with every temporary, deviating
comfort to our persistent misery, but ultimately, as the tool of true
discernment of deep and meaningful experience, it is a clumsy
indeed.
Whatever makes us strive to relate the unrelatable by word is a
mystery, but it is a cruel inadequacy especially in personal relations,
loving relations, and it is that deficiency that often turns love to
hate. Why don't we just live? The whole of experience is there before
us, not hidden but open and complete. It is there in Michael's smile,
in his touch, in his shrug of the shoulders. "What are you thinking?"
he asks me. He does not pursue it when there is no explanation, he sees
it in me. Our problem, apart from thinking that there is some
mysterious hidden essence that will account for all that is before us,
has always been our attempt to set it all out in words and believe that
the words are true. Yet there are so many ways that these things can
become known, can be understood. This, in some ways, is the basis of my
story. In the future I do not want to look back and think that I have
lost so much. But that is what I say now, that is what I feel. That is
my sadness.
What is it between us that makes us comfortable together? For Michael
and I words were never a hindrance, they were simply insufficient. When
we were apart words were often all we had but the occasions when only a
glance, or a smile, or a particular expression revealed a whole context
of meaning, were the occasions of significance in our relationship.
When we would be engaged in some activity together and would look up at
each other catching a certain expression, it generated a powerful
affect and an immediate understanding. My life with Michael is based on
a mental album of these images and their meanings. To keep these images
clear is a necessity.
The bed by now was no longer a welcome place. The warmth of closeness
had gone. The separation completed itself by marking me with a sense of
frustration that quickly slipped into anger but an anger contained
within my thoughts. Outwardly I went about things as normal. The day in
all its coolness beckoned from beyond the covers and I slipped out into
it feeling for some moments its awesome hostility. The chinks of light
slipping through inadequate curtains were unwelcome. The chill on the
skin from darts of cold air penetrating the cracks in ill fitting old
windows, meant increased discomfort and irritation
The body that remained in the bed stirred and stared at me while I
prepared to dress. He loved to see me dress from nakedness, to witness
the whole ceremony. It was a show. I was the act, the only act. The
main attraction. For that reason he rarely exited the bed first.
"A striptease in reverse." he mumbled. "Is that an original idea do you
think? Are there any such things as reverse strip clubs? Imagine a
situation where a group of people watch a woman appear naked and then
watch her as she proceeds to dress."
I smiled at this line of thought and found it momentarily interesting,
interesting enough to stop and stand still, holding my cool camisole
close to my skin.
"But that is what I do for you," I said breaking my little
daydream..
"I know, but I've never considered it before in the abstract so to
speak. But is there actually a public perversion of this sort? Actually
dresstease clubs with dresstease devotees?"
I sat. He sat up and rested back on his hands. We both sat silent for a
moment with this idea floating between us.
"I have no doubt that such an activity has not been overlooked by human
erotic ingenuity and its expression located somewhere." I said.
Again silence prevailed as we considered the idea. He looked up to the
ceiling and I looked down to the bed. We then looked at each other with
nothing more forthcoming on the subject but the silent reflection
itself was pleasant. It was like a quickly snatched sleep with its
attached dream. I placed myself at its centre and at its edge. I was in
the Dresstease Club as its main attraction and I was also the observer,
watching myself, enjoying the spectacle. I felt myself as performer and
audience. For a brief period I felt my full femininity. But it was all
so short lived. I was getting cold. We then laughed a little and
shrugged our shoulders. It seemed the moment for an inspired act.
I held the camisole out before my by the thin straps and slowly slipped
it on. I then took each item of clothing, carefully laid out the
previous evening, and began my performance. Against the silence he
loved to hear the sounds of silk and satin being pulled tight and
fastened over smooth skin. He would close his eyes, lift and turn his
head like a blind man twisting his head this way and that in a search
to extend his enhanced hearing. But he loved the colours too and their
combinations and could not blind himself for long to the effects of
shimmering lilac under garments covered up with a smooth white
blouse.
I knew what he liked, not because he would tell me what to wear but
because I had secretly educated his taste in these matters. He had, of
course, the basic good taste to work on but I had quite deliberately
set out to make him responsive to my creative dressing. He came to know
the power of apparently trivial items of clothing and jewellery. There
are standards, there are proportions that have to be observed but
nevertheless there are almost limitless possibilities in terms of
appealing combinations. This is because the individual imagination
applies different rules on different occasions to that with which it is
presented.
His pleasure was becoming more than apparent. He wriggled in its
discomfort and looked for a more discreet position. What did I think of
that pleasure, this pleasure to this type of stimulus? Well, I liked
it. I liked it because I loved him and his pleasure was also clearly
mine. This is how it works. The act cannot be pleasurable in itself.
This is where people get confused and where pleasure becomes
perversion, that is, an ultimately painful experience that is
momentarily taken to be pleasure. And these sorts of misperceived
experiences represent, when applied universally, how insignificant and
superficial our lives can become. They are also responsible for the
never ending search for sensual novelty which drives us to perpetual
frustration
When my act was done I sat on the bed. My anger had subsided as had my
discomfort. I felt good. It felt good to be looked at and desired. It
felt good to control the circumstances of pleasure, not only your own
but that of another. It now only took the economic route to make his
pleasure complete. The economic reference indicates how little movement
outside the mind was needed to achieve the end. He would often object
to this initiative. He didn't feel right if he wasn't fully awake and
clean, that is, free from the night's sticky accumulations. He liked
proper preparation. But, prepared or not, he always succumbed to the
stirring word, to the sweet smell and to the soft touch. He was weak in
this respect, or rather I was too strong. If I reflected on that it
annoyed me slightly, only very slightly, but I did not allow myself the
luxury of that reflection. In any case I considered myself to be in the
wrong. Although, when he showed his own annoyance at having given in -
his smile retreated for a split second - I stiffened inside with my own
irritation. Nothing is perfect!
I sometimes asked him why he gave in to the temptation. He said because
I was too powerful. And then his smile returned. I relaxed.
" Last night I dreamt that I slept with three women Madeleine," he said
just at the point of sensual weakening when confessions of secret
desires or occult actions are likely to spill forth.
Madeleine. I whispered it to myself. I loved my own name. My name in
full on his lips, in his voice, meant everything. People had always
taken the liberty of calling me Maddy but he could never bring himself
to do so. By coincidence he insisted I call him Michael and not Mike. I
always did but he feared I would fall into casual ways. This hatred of
the short cut signified our mutual aversion to sloppiness our
inclination to do things in full. We liked ceremony but not pomp and
show. It was a matter of simply doing the thing correctly with
attention paid to detail, working it through to its natural end. We
liked rhythm and order. We liked elegance of movement. Not for the sake
of show but that it could potentially be a show. It was pleasure. This
even applied to habitual and apparently "non-events" such as speaking.
So, the expression of a word was a pleasurable event where each
syllable was invested with its full bodily impact. So, even though he
would give in to the overwhelming provocation of these early morning
advances and showed his pleasure, he emerged at the end of it with a
certain annoyance which was the knowledge that the event had not been
given its full recognition.
I heard my name and nothing else he said. So, seeing me in a distant
contemplation he repeated himself. It took a few seconds for me to
respond.
" Did you know them?" I asked without surprise or alarm.
" Who?" he said with quizzical expression.
"The women. Any of them? All of them? Were they real? "
"Only you." he replied.
I suspected that was a lie but I didn't care because I wanted him to
feel free to desire what he wanted. A lie of this sort meant nothing.
Yet, because I was never absolutely certain it was a lie I could also
entertain the idea that I was indeed in the dream. And that he wanted
not to hurt me meant something.
He watched me applying my lipstick.
" Was it good?" I said
" Do you mean was it pleasurable?"
"I guess it was pleasurable but was it rewarding, valuable?"
"It was strange. We met as strangers but all of a sudden we were so
close. There was no getting to know one another, no courting, no
playacting, no presenting our better selves. Being immediately intimate
seemed the natural thing to do. It seemed to be wholly a matter of
sexual comfort and emotional necessity. Yes, it felt wonderful."
This man was wonderful. He invented beautiful phrases and spoke them
with his gentle voice. And he had amazing dreams, full of the freedom,
the expression of a peaceful mind. All totally without pretension. His
thoughts were revealed with easy sophistication and with total honesty.
That was confirmed by the look in his eyes, darting, child-like,
nervous, excited, happy. Also his general behaviour. Relaxed. Arrogant,
he was anything not. Indeed he could have done with a dose of arrogance
to sustain his own lack of self belief. Yet if arrogance had existed
anywhere in his being I would not have taken to him as I did. I had an
intuitive disgust of pretence, of anything that a personality contrived
as a mechanism of social survival. I suppose everyone does use
camouflage to a certain degree but there are discrete and mostly
unconscious ways that create no appreciable distortion to the
person.
Together we knew and had known some awful distortions. There were a few
acquaintances that were free from convention and we counted them as
friends. We were realistic enough to know however, that friendships
were difficult to come by, mainly because of our high standards but
better to have standards and friends than no standards and no knowledge
of who was good and bad. We did recognise that we too had to be judged
but it was good to live in the knowledge that others were applying the
same ideas. This sort of confirmed the strength of the few friendships
we did have.
Most mornings his waking would occasion the detailed description of a
dream just had. The ease with which he had dreams and the talent for
recollection astounded me. I would listen with closed eyes seeking
earnestly to be with him in his most intimate world. He told me that I
was in all his dreams, somewhere, especially those which involved
sexual associations. He said I was a sexual sentinel in his every
erotic imagining, a necessary element to excitement. Again, I was
uncertain about the truth of this because I was uncertain that love
could be so powerful as to demand such an effect.

His dreams were always pleasurable without even a threat of pain. He
lived his dreams like he lived his life. The theme, though always
sexual, varied in circumstance and character. They represented his
freedom. When I dreamt I had one dream. This restriction represented my
general state of confinement.
It was fifteen years since we first met. We had seemingly made no
progress in our relationship since. There was apparently non to make.
It was all there at the start. I waited for him to leave the bed. We
left the room together as we always did touching somewhere. I made his
breakfast and watched him eat. Did I see a sadness in his eyes, in his
knowing that I was going away? I don't know. I looked and looked but
couldn't be sure. He even ate with a smile. He drove me to my point of
departure. We said goodbye. And then I started my journey back.

The journey back
The gentle falling and rising. The encasing, proximate heat. The almost
subliminal high pitched whine, seduced me into deep and silent
sleep.
"Is that you Padre Ara?jo?" I shouted into dreamland. But the words
only carried to those occupying the high pressure world, 30,000 feet or
so above the ocean.
And with those words I was momentarily captured between two realms. I
saw familiar faces smiling familiar smiles, seated on wooden benches,
dressed in black. I saw my image, my own self, reflected in his dark
lenses. I felt a choking heat and gasped for clean, cool air. A
persistent inescapable hum, occasionally recognisable as whispered
words, pumped relentlessly into my ears, reverberating in a regular
beat within the framework of the skull. Then, some fresh air. A
lifeline.
A priestess approached with offering hands outstretched. In her hands
was nothing for I could see nothing. But this emptiness seemed to offer
everything I needed.

She held it out and offered it with her soul, as if she wanted her most
precious possession to be mine. And I so wanted this invisible gift. I
longed for it and sought at that moment to claim it for my own. But
there seemed no means to accept it. How to accept it? I felt I was too
little and too weak. I was bound and helpless. Movement was impossible.
And alI the time I felt the general disapproval from the familiar
smiling faces, which was declared in their whispers and shaking heads
and even in their smiles. And they had their way through some power
that was theirs.
So, my passivity, my inaction, was taken as refusal and the offer was
withdrawn. The priestess became a priest like all the others, with a
smiling face and dark lenses, which hid the kindly soul. And I shouted
once again, "Is that you Padre Araujo?" So, carried on a perfumed
carpet of pressurised air out of red, glossy lips into warm and now
responsive ears, the message of comfort for a dreamer of bad
dreams.
"Only a dream madam." she said with all her uniformed authority. " A
bad dream. It's OK, you're back in the land of the living." And not
knowing where I was for a moment, or which realm held sway, I issued a
statement of demonic ferocity, exhibited clearly in my quaking frame,
condemning the world of the living, as she called it, as a monstrous
torture chamber, where enjoyment and pleasure are nothing but the
occasions when one is spared the pain. The pain was real, the pleasure
the mere absence of it. I issued a further frantic warning, to what I
was slowly beginning to recognise as a group of confused and
disinterested travellers, that we are all of us, in this chamber, not
only the prisoners but our very own gaolers, incapable of turning the
key to offer freedom, or to deny it.
I arrived and stood alone with a strength moderated by the idea of the
place and its inhabitants. The aloneness here in a place like this is
not freedom. Space is not freedom. Being apart is not freedom.
Belonging is freedom. Freedom is dispensed

The Encounter
" Is that you Ara?jo? " I whispered to myself.
Aged and worn, bent forward on a bench in the shade with his weight on
a stick. That's how he came to me now 20 years on. By accident? Is
there such a thing? The distance between us was that of the town
square, a town of variable activity and evident passivity. On the
fringes of the square there was movement, a social conation at work,
whilst at the centre there was rest where the endeavour had waned. This
social construction was set like a jewel, with no illusions, among
mountains of ripening vines.

Above the old cleric's greying pate, a miniature universe, a black,
speckled harmony. The fly, attracted by warm dirt, decay and the colour
black, was dispersed to frenzied dartings by a heaven bound
ecclesiastical rod, but only temporarily. For when the rod was
withdrawn, the black, rotating specks filled once again, with increased
appetite, their ritual orbits. What moves this creature? Not suffering
or pain. Not knowledge of past or future. Not love or hate, nor rule or
novelty. Not words. Governed it is merely by

So he came to me, arriving from across the square, unwavering in
natural constraints, invading, impressing, probing the depths to
unearth and resurrect the memorials of old friends. And once raised up
they were as if they had never been entombed. Indeed, they emerged
regenerated, seizing the attention for themselves, seeking to usurp the
place of the immediate thoughts and concerns --a swirling cocktail of
notions; this town of my birth, the cemetery and the mother and father
who lie in it, this country and its people, and life and love at home--
all flickering in and out, searching for a window in a mind now only
intent on entertaining the distant past. A mind affirming and denying
and directing itself to some future tragic deed. That is its
appointment.

So I saw him absent and I saw him present. The connections had been
made and proceeded to their unhindered result. I found him and he found
me. He, as I knew him. That is you Padre Ara?jo. Yet he sat on his
bench unaware of my presence. Was I never present to him in all these
years? Was his idea of me just another in the heap of unexumed relics
stored in the vaults of his mind? What notions gave him pleasure now?
From across the square I saw him chuckle with aged pleasure. What was
the idea that inspired this?

Now, all along it had been my intention to find him, although in the
strict sense I had not ever been looking for him. That is the nature of
intention, it makes fools of us. But strange even to say, to find him,
when the truth is he lodged with me at all times. From my 11th year he
came to stay with me, not as a guest, for he took it upon himself, not
only to rearrange the furniture, but reconstruct the very foundations
of the abode.

And as he slipped in and out of the abode without announcing himself, I
could never be quite certain it was him, the man himself so to speak.
He had his own door and his own key. Yet if not him, it was surely a
close relative or an heir to his throne because he brought with him the
familiar torment, both to my woken and unwoken existence.

The bedroom. That is where he liked to appear first after any absence,
coinciding with my early unprotected thoughts. He rose up with the sun
and entered with the first waking rays that penetrated the cracks of
the closed wooden shutters. Transported by watery winter sunlight, he
would witness the unveiling of a precocious young female form and stand
in wait for its concealment, first as a woman in womanly garment, and
then as his girl in the plain blue school smock.

He swung his stick once more into the air and once again changed the
universal order. He did not move yet he escorted me from the square
back to my hotel, to my room. Weary with the heat I fell asleep with
him and woke as usual with his name on my lips. " Is that you Padre
Ara?jo?" What pressure of presence. Close, confining, binding me inside
sweated sheets. No light. Non required. No distance. No space. Absolute
immediacy of form. He moved in my nostrils as smoke and oil, the oil
that always made his face shine. Bending low over me he mingled his
breath with mine, a suffocating air that made me heave. And the words,
I heard the words, and saw the lips and felt the lips livered and
wetted inside my ear and heard the words again and again, " Say a
prayer little girl. Ask the holy mother to intercede, to protect
you."

The Visit
I emerged into the new day. I made a visit. I saw children. Children
dancing in between tombstones. Women also, but not dancing. Dressed in
black they clustered at the point of their mourning, distracted by this
stranger's presence. They stared, From an early age they knew how to
divine a foreign presence and without a flicker of discomfort, engage
them with hypnotic intensity until the stranger feels that unique lack
of belonging. Yet I once belonged but I didn't have to look to find the
outsider I had become. Before me and beyond them the tomb of my parents
and all around the eyes boring into me with a force more disturbing
than the blistering sun. They stared, but didn't know the hate through
which they were perceived.

I took myself out of their interested gaze and to another place. The
clean, moist air that swept up the green terraces from the superb
river, encircled the drab, distempered school walls, but failed to pass
beyond its portals. Within it the hideous odour of incestuous priestly
breath circulated without renewal. The sickly scent of hell. And in the
bare chambers of crumbling plaster, authoritative voices echoed. It was
the past made wholly present.

With the holy mother on our lips it all began. With the holy mother on
our lips it all ended. We asked for her protection from the devil and
the forces of evil but the devil was non other than he, he who asked us
to pray, because he filled the air with hate. We breathed it in and
were filled with it. Filled so full, it was spat out in all directions.
And as the world was disposed to him, I hated that world.

But he was the devil because he rejoiced in his hate and inflicted
pain on the thing he hated. And the idea that he was destroying the
hated thing, filled him with pleasure. The sphere of his pleasure was
the sphere of my pain and the fear that I felt, provoked a weakness and
loss of appetite for life and left no power for love.

Between the prayers of beginning and end his black form eclipsed the
light and he was inside me. No longer was I master in my own house. He
remained there with his whispers. His words were him, for the idea I
had of him was in and through his words. But the inclination of his
hate was not limited to the delivery of words.

He sought to break the body, leaving his traces visible for all to see.
He let us know that the breaking of the body of Christ was the breaking
of Christ himself and I could see Christ's suffering in myself, being
forsaken and left powerless to act. Yet all who saw me bruised, saw not
a broken body but a spirit being shaped by a godly man. And they all
smiled the blessed smile, the one I saw each day as a sign of things to
come.

And again I saw him bend over me, mingling his breath with mine, but I
turned and saw the river and felt its clean, moist air sweep through
me, purifying. And briefly, there was a window, a minute pinhole of a
view to home and the world of sweet joy, to the man who was not devil
or God but pure love.

With the shutters closed I sat in the room trying to keep at bay the
impinging external annoyance, the annoyance of apparent normality of
life. The appointment pressed closer, its idea distilling the mind into
as pure a singular thought as there is or can be. On experiencing this
sort of intensity, no one can resist the urge to fall asleep.

The Appointment
I woke with the idea of his suffering, the idea of his decline and
destruction. I had the thought of his departure from life knowing that
he was lost and without the endeavour to survive, being overwhelmed by
my hate and accompanied by it to the very end.

With shutters now open and the outside world pouring in, I looked
across the square to the bench where he would sit. On this occasion it
only offered up its emptiness. But when I saw the bench, I saw the old
Ara?jo poking up his stick to disperse the flies. But that was nothing.
Of him I had no knowledge, merely an idea of watery significance.
However it soon served its purpose by winkling out the ghost, who once
again stood over me blocking out the light and whispering the words of
torment.

He entered the room as I had arranged. From the balcony I saw him
standing in the doorway in the bright, dusty, broadening band of
sunlight. He saw the woman before him through his dark lenses but
didn't know her. Panning his head vertically he inspected the plain
blue school smock but didn't know it. He tapped his stick on the wooden
floor with the regularity of his trembling arthritic arm and I saw in
him no evil sign, even when he smiled the blessed smile.

I saw that he perceived me in a confused way, with no clear idea of me.
What he knew was mutilated, vague and without significance. Up to that
moment I had no power over him, and none over myself.

But the path lay clear. Keep him with me but make him mine, his body
mine, his mind mine. Let him passively enter into me so that there is
no longer him, outside or inside, but absolutely in me, owned by me as
my idea.

So, when he said. " Who are you? " and "What do you want?" , I came to
him along the lighted, dusty path and without a word pulled him gently
to me so that his aged head lay on my shoulder. And standing in the
light which had shone on his oily face, I cast my shadow over it, and
whispered in his ear, " Say a prayer Padre. Ask the holy mother to
intercede, to protect you. "

And so it was done. There was no struggle. In that moment I ceased to
hate for there was nothing, nothing to raise it up within me. Under an
eternal aspect I saw clearly and understood, and although I felt no
particular love, I felt the power to love again, which was at the very
same time freedom. I had returned.