"JERICHO" "This is a diary written backwards, because that's how I'll trace the memories of my horrors." "Here I bear witness to my memories." "Because you have to understand, God of my ancestors, that I still call for you although you don't listen to me, and that Jericho has not fallen, Jericho is in the soul." "Brother Santiago, Brother Santiago!" "Good morning." "My Lordship the Bishop has been looking for you since morning, and he orders me to tell you that..." " That's fine, that's fine." "Relax." "Rest for a while and help me with this." " Put it here." "Do you know what it is?" " No." "An almond tree." "And one day, beneath its shadow, your children will be taught about religion and all the good stuff that is necessary to learn in life." "The bad stuff, that they will learn about soon enough." "And why an almond tree?" "It would've been more sensible with a kapok tree or a mahogany tree." " Regarding the journey, I don't..." " Maybe, with good care, you could acclimatize." "In any case, my dear child, it's good men like yourself that we need in order to sow this land of savages with lettuces and Christians." "Good morning, Your Eminence." "Griffins!" "Basilisks!" "This is the Devil's doing!" "Agents of Belzebub!" "My poor melons from Villaconejos!" "Ingratus natura!" "(= Ungrateful nature!" ")" "Give me more, woman!" "There must be something hidden in your innards." "You eat for twenty men!" "It's to one's advantage. "As long as you sleep well, and your urine is clear..."" "I will not eat any meat." "Just some water." "We aren't fasting today too, are we?" "Could it be just a new whim that the "martyr of Santiaguillo" brings us?" "Don't you blaspheme, woman!" "You'll make our stomachs cramp!" "I don't blaspheme." "I'm talking to this cheek, who'd better start revealing his changing moods now." "Today you're happy, tomorrow angry, yesterday gloomy..." "You've become impossible" "I'm leaving." "Go then!" "The next time I'll charge you depending on how well you treat us." "I will go to the Southern Ocean as the German's chaplain." " Congratulations!" " What do you mean?" "You heard me." "I trust, sister, that you're not deaf." "What craziness are you talking about?" "You only venture beyond Santa María to return to Spain, from whence you never should have left!" "Stop ruling the world!" "You spend your life deciding what's good and what's evil as you damn well please." " Leave me alone, Carmencita!" "We're not kids, nor vegetables that you can treat as you see fit." " In the godforsaken place this deranged German is searching for there is only death." "Why don't they just send another?" "Like one of those stupid monks who looks after the Bishop's vegetable garden." "But no, the most outstanding must go!" " Just so the worms..." " Shut up now, woman!" "Here we all come for the adventure." "Yes, but to have a better life." "This right we have earned through hardship and adversity." "One behind the other ever since our birth!" "I must have seen hundreds go that never returned." "Even their families got their names mixed up." "We have come here trying to be happy, or at least to die with some food in our bellies." "You're wrong!" "Because I come with a thirst for souls." "Fifteen years in Dominican school, and I pray, I fast and I try to..." " Nonsense!" " out there exist men and women who have no title to Heaven because..." " Let God watch over them!" " That's enough!" "So that they can hear His voice in lands a thousand times larger than Spain." "Take care of yourself, dear one." "Take good care." "I've sinned, Brother Antonio." "The sin of vanity." "For having believed for many years that my destiny lay in the lecture rooms of San Gregorio, surrounded by students who admired my refined Latin, all of them entranced by my theology." "But now that I'm here, far from the world, suddenly the paper in the books turned into blood and dust and the beautiful ideas had to go face the wind, the soil," "mankind..." "Up until a few hours ago I felt as the happiest person alive." "I had arrived in land in a state of grace, where a new world was possible." "An island without a past, where one could start afresh." "I'm afraid, Brother Antonio." "Fear of having crossed the wrong border, and being in the very jaws of Hell." "I don't want to go!" " It's the command of God." "Let me stay here, in the school." " I'd be more than happy to..." " For ever and ever." "Praise be." "Catch hold of it, priest!" "What strange devils you put in my way?" "Leviathan?" "Amon?" "A new world should be inhabited by new devils." "The others should stay put in old Europe." "How filled with certainty was the universe found in my books!" "How exact was the order of my library!" "Sublime shield of ideas from behind which you believe that earthly chaos cannot reach you." "But what good is beauty and justice locked up in codices and bookcases?" "This is the world and we need Him here." "That His word inhabits every thing and every thought." "That today Sin walks with us." "And every horror was alive already from Creation itself." " Holy Moses!" " What a bright welcome!" "This is the treatment they give their enemies." " Us." "A couple of years ago it wasn't like this." "Back then they greeted us with food." "And for three pins from Toledo, and a piece of broken mirror," " you could get yourself a perl necklace." " Back then it was true." "Some water, Brother Santiago." "That German devil!" "When he dies, Hell will get a new master." "Come out of there, vermin!" "My lord wants to know where the people have gone." "Have him tell where they're hiding, and if he has seen or know anything about the Southern Ocean." "Ask him what his name is." "Some empty eye sockets saw the shadow of my soul born." "Icameto makethemfall inlove with God by force of hope." "I came dreaming of light and to give the day." "God, if you multiply my toils and sorrows it must be necessary that you also multiply my loves, as I carry on my back the dead weight of doubt." "Don't complicate things even more." "Just relax a bit." "Sometimes one has to leave earthly powers in the proper hands." " It was not for this we came." " We agree!" "But conquest by force is the only way to subject them, and power is needed to preach the faith to them." " That does not seem to be the course of our leader." "They are like children, we should win them over with gentleness!" " The Lost Tribe of Israel?" " Maybe!" "Don't be naive." "If God made them thus different, it's so we can do with them whatever suits us." "Like with the animals and the stones of the forest." "On one side He put men, on the other beasts." "Some created to reign, others to serve." "What a strange feeling to tread on land where the places still have no names." "What sublime joy to erect crosses and listen to church bells in hills where today there's only silence and emptiness." "It is feeling like Adam." "It is feeling blessed" "Like Joshua before The Promised Land." "But who then placed these men here?" "Who said: "Build Jericho", so it later can be destroyed?" "With what mysterious intentions you push us through the labyrinths of the world, one day stumbling into misfortunes and the next into smiles?" "ThatdayIcan remember." "I carried my doubts with joy, as, between fear and hope, love set up camp, where it lived in thoughts and died from neglect." "Here I go, however, herding thieves to save the world." "Listen, natives of this village!" "By order of the King of Spain, paternal and benevolent toward you," "I make you this requirement of peace!" "His Majesty Don Carlos, who also is like us, calls you to surrender peacefully." "By the grace of the Holy Father, who brings you rebirth, the islands have become..." "Brother Santiago..." "Brother Santiago!" "We want you to hear our confessions." " Today there will be no confession for murderers." "You cannot deny us this right!" "I have already told you so!" "Absolve us!" "No matter the penance!" "Are you all listening?" "There will be no Mass or Communion for murderers! Neither the Church nor I have any part in this." "You have seen nothing." "Now return to your place, and have a dream about a just man without fright or memories.." " What are you doing?" " Nothing that offends God." " Are you running away?" " Yes." "From the German, which is to say from Death." " Go now and sleep!" " No!" "I will leave with you!" "Very well." " What is that?" " A souvenir from the orderly." "But he stayed the worse for it." "And him?" " He comes with us." " Why?" "Because I damn well say so." "Divine blessing is never a burden." "Amen!" "This gold belongs to the King." " Don Carlos won't notice its absence." " You will be hung!" "Nobody will be making any reports." "The German had it hidden away..." "We returned it to Spanish hands." " Yours!" "Tell me who has better claim to it." "Brother Santiago... we know why we ran away," "do you?" "You are worse than us!" "I can smell the ocean." "I can sense it in the air." "The Southern Ocean is near!" "Are you crazy?" "And if this ocean doesn't exist?" "The Southern Ocean exists, and it's ours!" "Silence!" "Don't you hear it?" "Let others cope with it, and if we find it - very good." "Bring the glory, the coat of arms..." "And that's that!" "Let those after me make the sacrifice," "I'll go back home to the whores!" "Let's hope it's here so we can arrive back in the old country filthy rich." "I, Javier Gascuña, born in Pamplona and wounded in Italy whilst in the service of the Empire," "I hereby pronounce myself Governor and Captain General of these waters, and all the land along its shores, and of everything that one encounters from here to the ends of the Earth!" "You are crazy!" "The crazy one is you if we go back." "Maybe you can smell the city of the Omaguas!" "Emeralds are its cobblestones... and even the potties are of pure gold!" "They will kill us or they will sell us like lambs!" "That's for God to decide!" "We cannot continue ahead." "Everyone, grab your stuff!" "Gascuña!" "Gascuña!" "Santillana..." "Carrillo is unable to go any further." "Put down a sack and save his life." " I'm sorry, Father." "This sack holds my future." "Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti." "Amén." "Give it to me!" "I said, give it to me, you beast!" "Idiot!" "Come here, you swine!" "I've brought you some fruit." "Please help yourself, friar..." "I had much trouble setting fire to those branches." "What horror is this?" "I'm sorry!" "I beg forgiveness in the name of Almighty God!" "There was nothing to eat, and if we don't have the strength to march... how are we ever to return home?" "Pardon me, Father, pardon me!" "There was nothing to eat!" "With what strength would we get home if there was nothing to eat?" "It was him!" "It was Gascuña!" "He told me it was ok, that it wasn't a sin, that it wasn't the flesh of a Christian!" "Shut up already, you fool!" "As for you, little friar..." "it's best for you to remain silent." "My parents didn't teach me to kill priests... but here in the Indies everyone can learn!" "Some day, and with more forces, I'll return for you, my good friend." "All or nothing." "We've gone in a circle!" "We will never get out of here!" "Where is your damn ocean?" "We'll rest for a while." "We're doomed, Gascuña!" "We're doomed!" "Help!" "I'm burning up inside!" "When we arrive at Santa María, I'd like you to help me write my mother." "Tell her that I'm fine, and all that stuff." "Tell her that... that this is a strange land where everything is turned around." "That there are no walnuts, but there are tortoises that are like walking walnuts." "That men walk around in the nude and it's the birds that dress colorfully." "That there are serpents with legs." "That the grapes are bitter, but the seeds are sweet." "And maybe because of that the poor over there... will be the rich over here." "Silence!" " If it's a tapir, it's good food." " You're wrong about that." "It's a tiger, and we are the snack." "What is he saying?" "Just gobbledygook!" "I don't understand a single word!" "Tastes like bile!" " Eat it and enjoy it... so it won't be blood that you spit out next." "What's up, woman?" " Nothing." "It's nothing." "Go back to sleep." "Now come here!" "At this hour even the saints are asleep!" "For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus so that also the life of Jesus would be manifest in our mortal flesh." "Fire." "Fire." "Water." "Christ the Redeemer." "This... is a cross." "And on it," "Christ was crucified to save us all." "This... is a fish." "a symbol of Christianity." "Fish." "Fish." "Fish." "Fish." "Fish." "Fish." "Fish." "Fish!" "Fish!" "Fish!" "Fish!" "Fish!" "Fish!" "Fish!" "Tantum ergo Sacraméntum" "Venerémur cérnui:" "Et antíquum documéntum" "Novo cedat rítui:" "Præstet fides suppleméntum" "Sénsuum deféctui." "Genitori Genitóque," "Laus et iubilátio;" "Salus, honor, virtus quoque" "Sit et benedíctio;" "Compar sit laudátio." "Amen." "Let them come!" "Listen." "Sometimes I believe, God of my days, that religion only exists in the minds of men." "that "justice", "piety", "tolerance", are just words that try to embellish a terrible world." "That You invented everything to impose order on chaos." "That they're just excuses to wade across the horrors." "Religion is not what surrounds us." "Onthecontrary,itiswhatwevainly try to cover the darkness of the soul with." "I absolve you from your sins... in the name of the Father." "I absolve you from your sins, in the name of The Father and The Holy Ghost." "Amen." "What dark shadows inhabit my soul?" "A universe of demons devour my entrails." "But they're unconnected with me." "They will not be part of my flesh and soul?" "Aren't my hates the other face of my loves?" "Aren't my misfortunes the reverse of my riches?" "Andiftheyescape?" "And if I let them govern me?" "Oh, God, I call at your door and you won't let me in." "A circle of fire asphyxiates me." "It's the ring of my fears." "If you are God, you should have begun as a human being." "That way you'd have known what it is to carry in your bones the pain of life." "You'd have known bread and meat." "And you'd also have known that there's no clear boundary between good and bad." "And maybe some day you'll think like I do now, that all the truth of the world... all the truth of the world, resides in the skin of a woman, and in the fleeting smile of a child." "¡Ave María Purísima!" " Conceived free of sin." "Look!" "Something for your belly." "Come on!" "I take it away." "Where did they bury the gold?" " Get out of here!" "Get out of here!" "Don't come back!" "Happiness is a lightning flash in the night." "Whoever has suffered like I have, already know it all." "Locked up this prison where a body is crushed." "My soul is still searching for you from the ring of fire." "I'll still go knocking on every door in the labyrinth, and if they say I'm crazy, it's not because I've lost my sanity, it's because I've lost everything but my sanity." "So what then remains for me in this life?" "Nothing that one cannot think or dream, because Paradise only exists in my mind, and in the darkness of my imprisonment, there still remains the dream of a different world." "God... still I call for you although you won't listen to me." "Jericho hasn't fallen, Jericho is in my soul."