The Unworthy

by Agustina Bazterrica

The stained glass was smeared with black paint. The glass with images of the erroneous God, the false son, the negative mother, the God unable to contain the avarice and stupidity of his flock, the God who let them poison the nucleus of the only thing that mattered. This God, who left us adrift in a poisoned world, cannot be named or looked at.

I write as though I were there now, as though I could experience it again. I try to grasp each of the seconds that made up that time, believing I can thread them together with these fragile symbols. The feelings return so clearly when I write that I don’t doubt the faithfulness of my memories, my fabrications. I try to capture that present, that now, but it blurs with every word drawn, every time I use this insufficient language. Because I’m in this present, which will always become the past, barren words on a stained page.

Today, when I finish writing, I’m going to hide these pages and the knife behind a cabinet in the kitchen, wrapped in the fabric I use to protect them, the fabric I tie around my waist, under my tunic, where I keep the pages and my knife (which I use to open the crack) when I’m on the move, when I sense someone could find them. Tomorrow, when I organize them, number them, I’ll put them back in my cell. Maybe one day, in some future now, someone will read what I have written and learn of our existence. That we were part of a Sacred Sisterhood and lived on a sliver of land that remained pure, resplendent, thanks to the piety of the Enlightened. Or maybe they’ll become dust and return to the earth, fertilizing it, nourishing the roots of a tree, and our story will be understood through the leaves that oxygenate the collapsed world.

A dead bird is decomposing. There are so few that I decide to pay it homage, to observe death at work. The grass around the corpse is dry, the bird’s fluids having drained down to nourish the earth. The creature looks framed by an aura that could protect it from further death, as though nature has given it a prominent spot because of its sacrifice. A personal sanctuary. The cells have been destroyed and the volatile substances have traveled through the air. The ritual has begun. Flies and beetles feed on it and deposit their larvae in its hollows, in its open mouth, in its wounds. They eat its flesh, its tissues, its eyes, its organs, in a minute, frenetic dance. Together, silently, they shred the bird. They produce a smell that’s rank and heavy. I can also smell the perfume of dead flowers. (I wonder if God is inside the larva. Our God, whose name we don’t know. I wonder if God is the hunger behind hunger, and if behind God lurks the hunger for another God.) I wonder what stage of death she’s in, under the earth, if she feels her body disappearing little by little in the darkness that covers her. If she’s defenseless. The bird died looking up at the sky between the leaves in the trees. Or looking up at the stars. It died surrounded by beauty. Helena died in the dark, she died in the disaster. She was the one who taught me that disaster means living without stars, or celestial bodies, or comets, without the light of night, in complete darkness. (In the mouth of God?) She w...

I’m not thinking about her, about her long legs, about the possibility of her being alive, finding the path back to us. I’m not thinking about the wandering woman, about the white deer with the stained dress and men’s boots. I’m not speculating about the stains, about their different shades, about what caused them. I don’t know if that filth is blood, mud, the splattering of violence, of intimidation, traces of hunger, desperation, loneliness, the vestiges of evil. I don’t imagine myself resting my head on her stomach to hear her breath, nor do I believe I can smell her scent of a free bird, of a precipice. I don’t wish for the funeral to be interrupted. I don’t wa

We passed the cemetery where the monks are buried, reluctant to walk through it. Some say they’ve seen shadows, heard screams in the night, cries like wails, hushed sounds, the howls of suffering animals. Others whisper they can sense the monks’ spirits everywhere. At night, they see presences and shadows, hear voices in the hallways. We passed the Cloister of Purification (which we think was the watchman’s house, though they decided to call it a cloister, despite there being no columns, no arcade, no monks moving through it).

The Chosen and Enlightened must preserve their purity, that’s why they’re not buried. Their essence is inviolable, sacred. The Minor Saint’s body will be exposed to the elements because the earth’s pollution must not be allowed to contaminate her. The sun, the rain, the wind, a bird or two, maybe a vulture (if they still exist) will ensure her cells, her flesh, her essence, are scattered throughout the sky, remain up high, untouched and clean. He says it’s one of the greatest honors, that only the Chosen and Enlightened have this privilege. That’s why Helena, the insurgent, the agitator, the tenacious woman, is in the earth, because her body was a disaster zone, a blind maelstrom.

That was when I still had a mother who taught me to read and write; who handled books with care, saying they were marvels contained in paper, calling them our friends; a mother who celebrated life through small acts, every day; whose luminous presence found beauty in the world that was degrading minute by minute.

I had to explain what a tiger was, and they were amazed that an animal like that had existed in the world. We took it for granted that they had died, all the tigers, that they had died of contamination, died of thirst, or by drowning, died with their tongues black and their eyes blind, died of sadness, died in the cracks of the earth, in the silent cry of the world splitting in two.

Burning a book made me angry because I knew I was setting fire to a world. But we needed to keep warm and to cook the animals we hunted.

(Should I be happy I survived starvation? And the years I was part of a group of predatory kids—of fierce, merciless, piranha kids? Orphan kids who couldn’t trust adults. Tarantula kids who learned to hunt rats, cats, birds. Should I feel guilty about the food I stole, the people I hurt? Should I punish myself for those I killed?)

I can write until the candle burns out. Sometimes I try to keep going in the dark, but I no longer want to waste paper or ink on incomprehensible ideograms. Someone might read me, read us. There are times I think that none of this matters. Why put myself in danger with this book of the night? But I have to because if I write it, then it was real; if I write it, maybe we won’t just be part of a dream contained in a planet, inside a universe hidden in the imagination of someone who lives in the mouth of God.

But then she spoke, and her voice wasn’t radiant or translucent, wild or sweet. It was something else, the yellow gaze of a wolf, the ones I’d seen in the abandoned books at the National Library. A sad, profound voice, of someone who’s experienced and accepted terror, of someone able to create beauty.

Mom said there’d never been a good year while she was alive. Her great-grandparents had been the last to experience a sense of well-being. She had always lived with ecological disasters, which worsened day by day. At least we can still feed ourselves, she told me, live in peace at home. Our home where swallows nested in the roof. Mom believed that swallows only nested in happy homes. How do they know, Mom? How can they tell a happy home from a sad one? Because there’s a brilliance to happy people. It expands and things become imbued with it. What does imbued mean? That the light lingers on what they touch. The swallows can see it.

I struggled to concentrate because Lucía radiated something else. Longing? No, she wasn’t burdened by the many-headed serpent of desire. I was bloated with avarice. We all were. The servants wanted to stop serving, though they couldn’t, though they would go on being who they were for the rest of their lives. We unworthy wanted to stop being unworthy so we could be Chosen (mutilated) or Enlightened. We could be emissaries of the light if we made enough sacrifices.

Behind the clouds we saw lights appear and disappear, the lightning held by the black sky. A catastrophe can contain such beauty, I thought.

(What is it like to hear the words emitted by the mouth of God? Are they small, ephemeral explosions? Does his tongue cradle death?)

Someone screamed on the other side of the door. It was like a shrill cry, cutting. A wail? One of the Enlightened trying to chew shards of glass? I was startled. It was then that I asked myself why I wanted to be Enlightened. Did I really want to be an emissary of the light? To live locked up? To be an intermediary between God and this contaminated world? Was my help necessary, my participation? Escaping from the House of the Sacred Sisterhood means death in the devastated lands. Are the miracles in this blessed space real? Or is it the water in the Creek of Madness that causes us to believe? To question means living in the desert. In a heaven with no God?

As Lucía stroked my back, she spoke in her wolf’s voice, her translucent yellow, golden voice that was like touching the heart of the sun. She whispered: The truth is a sphere. We never see it whole, in its entirety. It slips down our throats, through our thoughts. She went on talking, very close to my mouth but without touching it: The truth is changeable, it contracts, implodes, it’s powerful like a bullet. And it can be lethal. I asked her why she was telling me this, but she put a finger to my lips and brought hers even closer, until they were almost touching mine: The truth, a sphere that also contains within it a lie that spins at a different rhythm, like a cog that seems broken, unnecessary, but is vital to the mechanism’s functioning. The challenge is finding the lie within the sphere. After that we were silent.

Trees, plants, mushrooms, emit a sound, each has its own melody, she told me. I can hear that melody if I really focus. This tree’s song is sad, a funereal cadence. But it’s beautiful, very solemn, as though a whole life were throbbing in the earth.

The air smelled like summer still protected by the cold of early spring, or behind the cold, a summer that’s burgeoning, that promises to be defiant, its hidden presence ensuring we anticipate its arrival. Or was that the smell of happiness?

We left the cathedral and walked for days, for months, for years. We slept in abandoned cars, in empty houses. We didn’t find furniture or food, just broken walls and windows. Many others had passed through before us. I picked the locks on doors, cooked pieces of rat, pigeon, the occasional squirrel. I dug up earth and didn’t find anything. Dead worms. The earth was dry, malnourished, anemic, agonizing, empty. I shared the water I was able to boil with Circe, water that wasn’t completely contaminated, water we found in abandoned places, places where others hadn’t been able to pick the locks, water we collected when it rained. For many kilometers, we walked beneath a sun that burned us, and saw no one. People were dying of hunger, animals were dying of hunger. They had died of hunger, of thirst, died with useless tongues and open eyes, died of rage, died in the dry earth.

The only thing that’s really present is the pain. I can’t write it yet. My tears are smudging the ink on these pages. Erasing the letters. I have to stop. This hurts. How can you excise pain that radiates through your body, that torments your blood, that clings to your bones?

I don’t want to write what happens next, but I will, because the words these pages contain are like drops, small drops of black, ochre, blue, red, that dilute, briefly, the torment, the pain like silent fury.

The last thing I saw was Circe’s eyes, I saw the rabid ocean, the sea of savage stars fighting desperately, but behind the constellations, there was no rage, only an eternal dance of light.

Circe’s eyes were open and the sky was still there, held by her gaze. I rested my face on the body of my enchantress, against her soft fur, and remained there, without moving, waiting for her magical sound, the vibration that made me smile. I hugged her for hours as her body grew cold. I sang her a song without words.

I came to a dry river. On its banks stood a tree that looked dead, though I noticed a shoot growing, barely visible. A tiny stem with a small, green leaf. I decided that’s where my Circe would rest. I put her down very carefully, and with my aching, useless hands, the hands that had been unable to save her, I began to dig. The earth was hard, like stone, but I didn’t stop until my fingers bled. The hole was deep enough so that no animal would unbury her. I knew the chances were slim because there were fewer and fewer animals, but I would allow no one to touch her. No one could touch her. I placed her in the ground very slowly, closed her eyes, that immense sky, and covered her with dry earth.

These words also exist because of Circe, so I don’t forget her, so I can hear the magical sound my enchantress made, the subtle vibration that slips between the folds and curves of these clandestine letters. If I close my eyes, I hear it, because she’s with me, though her body is in the earth, in that tree I imagine to be green and in bloom.

These words contain my pulse. My breath. The music that radiates from the blood flowing through my veins.

There’s no time to dig my grave, to let the roots grow through my skin, to wait for fruit or herbs or mushrooms to sprout from my decomposing body. There’s no time to die looking at the star-filled sky.

All of the blood in my veins will fall like a red dragon, and the earth will receive it, absorb and transform it.

The fabric is stopping my blood from flowing. I think that’s why I can write. Why I haven’t fainted. Or is it the will to tell this story? So none of us, not Lucía, Circe, Helena, or myself, are lost to oblivion.

I’d stay behind to delay the progeny of filth, the mistakes of nature, the murderers that are the superior sister and that despicable man capable of lingering on my body. Lucía refused, begged me to escape with her, but I kissed her, stroked her black hair, hugged the blue paradise that she was, and told her I had no time left. I showed her the wound and she understood it was too deep. She hugged me back and wept until three of the enlightened tried to take her away. Lucía put up a fight. I told her they had to flee, that if they stayed, they’d be killed. Before they left, she hugged me again, and through her tears, she called me by my real name, kissed me one last time, and, in her translucent voice, said three words, but they weren’t words, they were a vibration of fire, fire that enveloped me like a river of light, a river of dazzling flowers.

I’m going to leave this book of the night, these pages I’ve been writing and protecting for so long, in the hollow of the tree, our tree. Maybe one day someone will find them and read them, or they’ll get wet and return to their origin, to the trees where they began, and these words will become the woods, will be purified by the sap, will glow in the roots. Or maybe they’ll disintegrate into a void that caresses, governs, hurts.