ON SUNDAYS, IT'S PEPPER ON THE TONGUE DAY

 

The liturgy squints at them, ruminating on what the widow wears and how their daughters, full of tattoos and piercings, look like the cattle they feed. The sermon is icy, not because it doesn't have the appeal of the word of the God they like to say they love, but because they have chosen to be from the root of evil. 

They notice everything that others do, the mannerisms, the yawn, the eyes bulging with sin, the impeccable clothes, as if they were models that they only see on television. The important ones on television always with good props and depraved in terms of actions. Sinners and deserving of the greed of others.

The butts are like mothballs, they stink in the distance and crouch on the heavenly benches, asking forgiveness for their ways, but they consider themselves exempt from the sin of the world. And at the end of the liturgy, when they can go out into the churchyard and look at the house of the Lord without sinning, they do so without any description, they speak ill of all their daughters-in-law and sons-in-law, especially the daughters-in-law and sons-in-law of others, poison comes from their tongue in spiritual terms and sparks come out of their eyes, such is the envy that they find it difficult to control. They show their grandchildren dressed in the communion garb, already tight but impeccable, to be looked at as if they were approaching the demons they covet. Yes, my grandson is going to be a doctor, mother, he's not a doctor, he's an engineer, damn, doctor and engineer are the same thing, they're some gentlemen whom others consider important, and they're very intelligent. Mine was spoiled as God commanded, I always knew that he was going to be important, that he was going to do works that only doctors do, mom, he is an engineer, because it is the same thing, not everyone can be a doctor and even the children of doctors fall short of my grandson who is an engineer with a doctor, who is a doctor of mine and I bet he is the smartest of all. Have you heard that Father Miguel is going to be punished? I don't know what he did, but I'm glad God doesn't sleep. God sleeps only for the viperine and slanderous tongues, for the envious eyes and for the lasciviousness with which they speak of others. The blesseds like to show that they are profoundly religious, that the creeds come out of their mouths with such holiness that they do not even know how to God, when they are alive, he does not go up to the altar for the people to worship. They plough their tongues into the lives of others, as if they were ploughing wheat fields, they reap the lives of others as if they were weeds that bother them just by looking at them. They are truly the devil's gold. In these small lands, the mind has more oxygen, but it also has more cunning and vileness, and they do not miss details of minor importance while they talk of a. Not at all. They are already looking at it and preparing the words of what seems to them, in those tiny minds, fed on plump and shallow water, the gall they produce is of the highest quality. 

On Sundays, when they receive visitors, they are filled with pride, they clean their nails, they scratch their ears and remove the wax, they scratch their eyes from their assholes, but bathing wears out their skin and God our lord knows how much they save in water. The cigarette butts are spared, every Sunday they use the outside fire to put meat and rice in the oven, no more cattle residues to cover, but with the same intentions. They set the tables with a tablecloth whiter than their heads, remove the remnants from their eyes while breaking the regueifa bread and wait for their sons-in-law to sit down, after the martinis with beer and the chorizo, which whetted their appetite for the main course. The cigarette butts are the Dominican figures of the villages, they are the last to sit down because they are the ones who serve the broth and the roasts, the salads and the bread baskets with remelas, who stack the bottles of wine and juice for the little ones, who prepare the dishes of the usual dessert of dry soup and between a piece of meat on the bone that they eat between their hands, they scratch their heads and arrange the animal fat through the hair strands and make the back of their necks and noses shine and they never, ever shut up. Unless there's a group of two talking quietly, then they listen, pretending to be busy with an act of contrition or the extra salads to put on the table. They are skilled at making calculations, they are even more apt at ploughing up collective life and giving superlatives in order to strike blows at other people, at neighbors from outside, and if they listen to them, they stand up, as if in the papal pulpit, and cast the barbarities as if they were pearls. The clotheslines are crowded with attentive eyes and dry mouths, which listen to the murmurs and on the backs of others see how their own backs are knitted. And as they lift the table they have, after shaking the remains, in piles on the floor, from a basin full of soapy water, they go on zimming the names of the people they forgot to speak, because all the characters run, and fictionalize the lives of the others as if they were seeing themselves in the old mirror they have behind the toilet, right next to the newspapers cut into pieces to clean the drain, their own pillowcase. They have a lot of money, but not for water and even less for toilet paper. And if they don't know how to read or don't want to, because it's hard for them to read current events, their ass is well informed. The blessed love to do liturgies and it would seem to outsiders that these immaculate souls rise up through the ethics and morals of others to practice all the iniquities that they do not show to the world. They love to give advice without being asked, and they like to look good in photographs, not because they are vain, but because they believe that they care for public religious order. They do not know life, except the smallness of the lives in which they live, in the mires that feed on the lives of others. And the people who observe them learn to avoid cultivating friendship with such beatified personages, because only those who resemble each other join. And on the thresholds that we know exist, a long line is taking shape and, only on the other side, in total darkness, do they realize that their fellow men continue on the path of desevolution, that is, developing more of the same of those who preceded them, without even crossing their minds, so full of shit, that the path is the other way around, forward, forward, because all these erratic lives have already been disinfested and have already found another way to purge themselves, to cleanse themselves, in the celestial school, the fateful one that cleans us the tallow that we carry everywhere, sowing evil in every place, in every being that has the unfortunate mishap of finding them.

On Sundays, minds emptied of wisdom, are filled with voluptuousness, the lasciviousness of the poor in spirit, after the Sunday celebration, after the removal of pet clothes, after the badly swallowed hosts, and finally, they are once again filled with the dung that is sown by civilizational backwardness. And there's nothing worse than the instinctive, hollow human. In an eternal return to the promiscuity of the Paleolithic. 

And we learn that, no matter how many Sundays go by, no matter how much time passes, true stupidity remains rooted in church beatas and in beatas everywhere. And it is necessary to say it, to read aloud, the lives chosen by these beings who, by making the other people with whom they live unworthy, become even less worthy of perpetuating themselves.

But make no mistake. The cigarette butts reproduce, it is something that goes from parents to children, from children to grandchildren and by throwing, all the relatives and friends who cross paths with this social class that has the name of ignorance and perfidy. 

On Sundays and beyond, I dedicate myself to reading people. And to practise forgiveness with the respective compulsory removal. The one that was granted to me. Noblesse oblige.