B0040702LQ EBOK Read Free Page B

lion
and lives in the mountains and inside that lion is a hare
and inside that hare is a dove. That dove has an egg. If
someone finds that egg and breaks it on my forehead,
then and only then will I die.' However, the person
listening to the story knows that the little servant of the
house will discover the connection between all those
things and that the father, who is in fact a demon, will
die. But I lacked the little servant's ingenuity and was
unable to answer my own questions. Perhaps I was slow;
perhaps the thread that led from the boar to Javier was more difficult to find than that linking the father's life to
the dove's egg.

    However, subsequently, things happened so quickly
that there was little time for reflection. For on the third
day of the hunt, the boar pursued and wounded a
straggler from one of the hunting parties.
    The letter continues on the eighth page of which the top half
is well preserved, the sheet having been placed the other way
up from the preceding pages. Of the lower part, however,
about eight lines remain illegible.
    The man's companions considered that the white
boar had again acted with prudence and discernment,
waiting amongst the leaves and watching the party until
one of them, the man whom he later wounded, was
alone and defenceless. Old Matias summed up the
thoughts of all of them:
    `It would be best if from now on you cover your
faces. Especially those of you who did Javier wrong. It's
clear he wants vengeance.'
    It was on one such day that I suddenly realised that
spring was upon us and that the fields were fragrant and
full of the lovely flowers the Creator provides us with.
But for me and for the other inhabitants of Obaba that
whole garden of flowers bloomed in vain; no flower
could perform its true function there, no flower could
serve as a balm to our spirits. The pinks and lilies in the
woods bloomed alone and died alone because no one,
not the children or the women or even the most hardened of the men, dared go near them; the same fate
awaited the mountain gentians, the thickets of rhododendrons, the roses and the irises. The white boar was
sole master of the land on which they grew. One of the
broadsheets published in your own town put it well: `A
wild animal is terrorising the small village of Obaba.'
And do you know how many nights it came down to
visit us only to ...

    The eighth page stops here. Fortunately the next two pages
are perfectly legible. In this final part of the letter, Canon
Lizardi's handwriting becomes very small.
    ... what Matias had foretold came to pass with the
exactitude of a prophecy. Night after night, without
cease, with the resolve of one who has drawn up a plan
and does not hesitate to carry it out, the white boar
continued to attack the houses of those who were
members of the hunting parties. Then, when panic had
filled every heart, the old man came to see me at the
rectory. The moment he came in, he said: `I've come
to ask you a question and the sooner I have your
answer the better. I want to know if I can kill the
white boar?'
    His words filled me with fear and not just because of
the brusque manner in which he spoke. For, since in his
eyes there was no difference between the boy he had
known and the boar currently plundering our valley,
what the old man really wanted was for me to give my
blessing to a crime. I must confess that I myself had my
doubts on the matter. I was wrong, you will say; a simple
priest has no right to doubt what has been proven by so
many theologians and other wise men. But I am just an
ordinary man, a small tree that has always grown in the
utmost darkness, and that animal, which in its actions
seemed to exhibit both understanding and free will, had
me in its power.
    For all those reasons, I wanted to avoid a direct
answer. I said:
    `There's no point even trying, Matias. You're an old
man. You'll never catch an animal like that, one that has
made fools of our