Extracts from writer's works
Gorrotxategi Mujika, Aritz
Narrative (short story and novel)
Egurra Pinotxori
Alberdania, 2002
Passage from the Rosamunde story in the Egurra Pinotxori collection of short stories
He placed the sword on the ground and showed me the orange. The fruit had a drawing in white on its peel. As I examined it more closely, the white marks seemed to me to suggest the shape of lips, rather than a drawing.
-Why doesn't she love me... I've been going after her all these years -he was talking to himself and did not look at me-. Transforming myself into a hundred different beings, having taken part in foreign wars waged in the coming and going of time, taking on the forms of both men and women, using both the sword and poison, I myself killed the Great Rijad of Persia, Alexander III of Russia, the revolutionary Tupac Amaru of Cuzco..."
-I don't understand a word! -I snapped.
But, the warrior persisted:
-...Whenever it snowed, I sought refuge in huts made of straw; tasting the caresses of distant beginnings, my lovers have been an old sword and this orange, which her lips kissed. Look at its peelà -and he gave me the orange-: the shape of her kiss had been drawn on the sweet fruit.
I drew the orange closer to my lips. When I touched the white shape, I felt something special, a sort of electric shock. Familiar music livened up the whole room.
-I met her in a small Ukrainian village, but she had a different name then: Hilariel. We lived together for about twenty years watching over the family as it grew up; then one rainy day she left home and went into the mountains in the south all alone. No one understood her strange behaviour. I've been looking for her ever since and, even if she fled thinking she could trick me, Rewhoran is not blind and he has crossed the seas believing that I would find her somewhere on the way to new lands. But like me, she too has been transforming herself...
The warrior carried on with his monologue, but all of a sudden he came closer to me dragging behind him the distinctive clank of his weapons. After kneeling in an odd way, he put his sword on one side and drenched the colourful rug in the room with his tears.
-Tomorrow they're going to execute me in Quito prison. I am no more than a soul, my body is in a filthy prison in the city centre and Viceroy Otchoa has already signed my death warrant. This one is the last, the last death, from which there is no return. Down the centuries I have gone from one civilisation to another, from one epoch to another, dying and being reborn. I told you earlier on, too, that I have participated in the armies of kings, emperors, tyrants and of popular rebellions. If I am not mistaken, I have died 999 times and Mother Earth has returned me to the world as many times. Life is not linear, as you believe. You can escape at any point in your life; you can experience your own death and, as you emerge out of a brief shadow of darkness, the next moment you can find yourself in an old house heated by an open fire. Your father is there to your left; your mother, to your right; and you, as yet unborn, in her swollen belly. If you were capable of understanding that...
The orange fell from my hand. The fear I had felt until then was in no way connected with what I was beginning to feel at that moment; indeed, it occurred to me that the warrior, that warrior who had crossed the generations, that mad lover who had pursued a woman called Rosamunde or an eternal idea, might be God himself. He did not know that, or maybe he did, and was concealing the fact. Among the different opinions that had taken shape around that strange idea, I suddenly remembered about the Syrian Al-Zaharia Fedallah. In his view, God had lost faith in mankind before Christ died on the cross, and did not have sufficient strength to save his Son from death. Continuing that line of thought, the Damascus-born philosopher created a strange legend based on God's guilt: God allowed his son to die, he did not offer him any help in the Calvary of the cross and abandoned him in a pool of blood on top of Golgotha. He had been resigned to the fact or a long time, and, well aware of the imperfection of the whole creation, he regretted having created the human being. He was exhausted, weak and without hope. That is why Fedallah regards passing mental confusion as normal, a dark moment of madness brought on by remorse. In that situation God forgot his identity and responsibilities for a while, in other words, he denies being God and comes down to earth in the shape of a human being in the desire to become an ordinary human. The Syrian thinker, however, died in Baghdad in rather strange circumstances before establishing the nature of the wave of madness. Perhaps that illness was incurable and the warrior who was going from one century to the next was not Rewhoran, but God. There had been similar legends in history, those of the Wandering Jew and Dutchman, for example. Perhaps God took on a human form in these two human beings to seek a different meaning to existence, penitence or love; and perhaps he only remembered the world starting from the day he was given the name of Rewhoran, he did not know he had unwittingly sent his son to his death.
-An old man in the Amazon forest announced my definitive death -the warrior went on-; that dark night as we gazed at the black river he told me that the one thousandth one would be the last. That is how it will all end, my life and my search for Rosamunde.
-But -I asked him-, why did Rosamunde leave? You have been searching for her down the centuries and if she, like you, is capable of moving freely through the sphere of time and place, sooner or later you would have come across each other. -The truth is, I was trying to prove whether the story invented by Fedallah was true. It seemed to me that I could be seeking the truth in Rewhoran's answers.
-I know where she is; I have her with me, but she has become immortal, whereas I am to die in the main square of Quito tomorrow.
-But where do you have her?
-Can't you hear it? Rosamunde, the work by Schubert. That's where she is, she is Rosamunde. She became flesh in a piece of music in the 19th century, after she had struck a shady deal with Schubert. That piece is also known as the Princess of Cyprus, and since then whenever it is played...
-Are you trying to tell me that spirits dwell inside music?
That strange idea had often occurred to me. Something was telling me that something human was being concealed behind melodies, that the significance of each piece of music was personal, perhaps a means of communication between different worlds. The warrior decided, however, to answer the earlier question, resuming the frightening tone he had adopted at the beginning.
-Why did she leave? I could not tell you, I am not the all-powerful... -he looked down from the window once again-. What city are we in and what day is it?
-This is La Torre and it is September 23rd, 1998.
-It is good to know the date of one's death. Tomorrow, on March 26th, 1522, I will be executed in Quito; whereas you will be in La Torre 476 years further on from me. Now, however, destiny has caused our paths to cross. The wind has brought me all the way here to your attic, and we will sign a promise in front of the window. At dawn tomorrow you are going to cut this orange -with his left hand he pointed to the fruit on the floor- and the world will forget that a woman named Rosamunde ever existed. When the sword beheads me, someone or something will take me to a faraway place. If I want to live in that foreign land in peace, Rosamunde needs to be dead. If the body of the orange is not destroyed, I will be condemned for ever and furthermore I will not be able to continue my search as I have until now. I would like to spend oblivion in peace, that is all. I bear too many generations and too much blood on my shoulders, and the time has come to cast anchor in a permanent place.
-Rewhoran, who or what are you really? -I repeated the question I had asked before.
Rewhoran went towards the bed where the book was. He picked up the pile of pages protected by a red cover and stood looking at me.
-Swear to me that you will cut the orange in half, nothing more. My past, my former being is of no importance. I told you earlier on, too, I am not the all-powerful. I will be killed tomorrow, and I have neither the power nor inclination to resist.
-Neither did God have enough strength to save Jesus; that is why He went mad.
An insurmountable stab of curiosity drove me to search for the truth about the warrior Rewhoran. A second later the whole thing struck me as absurd. He was not God and I was in fact in a dream. The face of the warrior did not betray any emotions. I gestured to him with one hand to indicate that I was mistaken and was apologising.
-That son never died.
