Resurrection - short story - Latin America: Private Eyes & Time Travelers

Literary Review, Fall, 1994 by Gabriela Rabago Palafox, Juanita L. Hoye

THE PACKAGE ARRIVED WITH THE MORNING MAIL. When Antonio returned home after class, his mother greeted him with the most radiant smile. "Already?" said the boy, feeling as if his heart would leap from his chest. "It's on your bed," she said, and Antonio climbed the staircase as fast as possible.

He stopped at the threshold of his room--with the knob in his hand--to admire from there the bundle of cream-colored paper, with its bright stamps decorated by postmarks. The hardship of waiting had been worth it.

Finally, he sat on the edge of the bed and undid the carefullyarranged wrapping. He rested the shiny, shielded box wrapped in cellophane on his kness; he read the message impressed on its surface:

Be a sculptor! The genuine ancient Christian art from the XVII and XVIII centuries. Made by yourself. Even a child can do it!(1)

And he read the directions written inside a box, a little lower than the first message:

Contains one piece: Saint Sebastian sculpture.

Impatiently, the boy tore the cellophane and opened the box. In accordance with the promise in the pamphlet from which he had taken the order form, the package included a dehydrated reproduction of a famous Baroque carving that evoked a member of the Christian sainthood. In this case, Saint Sebastian. For the moment, the image was a formless mass that would grow and become delineated when the "sculptor" submerged it in the bath or abundantly sprinkled it in the garden. The material used for the realization of the image allowed the sculpture, once it had taken its definite proportions (those of human scale, in accordance with the enlightened rule), to harden on contact with the air, to take at last the appearance of a Baroque statue. The "artist" had to apply the finishing touches in order to round out the appearance of the image. The package came with everything: crimson for the cheeks, a chestnut-colored wig and eyelashes, bright or transparent touches for the glance and, most importantly, artificial blood to intensify the traces of the wounds. Any Christian saint had them, be they physical or spiritual and, in one way or another they offered guidelines on the use of blood in the work.

Antonio had finished, almost, a decapitated Saint John the Baptist and a Dolorosa that had come out well enough; the Magdalena of Pedro de Mena, that produced a delicious result, and the head of Laying Christ by Gregorio Hernan, that was truly impressive. But the star piece of the collection was the Saint Sebastian that now he resolved to render.

The box sent from the United States of America (with extensions to various points on the Earth and the Moon), including a bow and a half dozen arrows so that the "sculptor," shooting them at the image of the saint, added the necessary drama. As indispensable information, the package offered a little booklet composed in the three principal languages of the world. Antonio read in silence.

Saint Sebastian. So began the United Nations Encyclopedia (an

organization that, during the Ancient Period tried, with lamen-

table inefficacy, to maintain the order between the nations of the

planet): an official of the Praetorian Guard, born in Narbona

(250?), dead in Rome (288). He converted to Christianity, lead

many important people to the credo, for which Diocletians or-

dered him shot to death with arrows. His holiday is celebrated

on January 20.

Christianity. In agreement with the opinion offered by the pro-

fessor, Carl M. Schwein, of the University of United Germany:

name that encompasses a series of religious practices, lofty rit-

uals that, the experts on the XX century agree, ensured a certain

bond with the doctrine of Jesus Christ, prophet who maks the

beginning of the Ancient Age. Undermined by its own deca-

dence, the aforementioned Christianity was extinguished to-

wards the dawn of the XXI century. Its history, without a doubt,

is associated with the greatest events of humanity. The leaders

of this church were, often, the ones who governed the destiny

of the people; they accomplished this thanks to their peculiar

ability to exercise control over the conscience of the faithful

through complete methods of persuasion and extortion, that in-

volved the personal life of the individuals and in a detached way,

their sexual lives. A restructuring movement deprived Christian-

ity of its sophistications in approach, not without strong effort,

to the doctrine of the prophet Jesus Christ; it is not known

who of these new Christians, with a basis on the data supplied

by Jose S. Aleksei, wrote the Autenticos. One of the principal

Christian groups of the Ancient Age, the Roman Catholic

Church, continuously produced three-dimensional images of

its favorite saints. As a gift of the archives of the F.I.E.N.,(2) whose

most remote antecedent was the U.N., we have been able to re-

cover, for our collection Be a sculptor!, a good part of some of

this statuary. Portions of genuine pieces are conserved in the

Lincoln Museum that you can bring to your home if you fill out

the attached coupon and send forty earth dollars to the address