counter selling Juan a lottery ticket and on the magazine rack with the kiddies books and the evening papers and
How to Knit
is S
& M Monthly
, with page after page of women being tortured, burned, tied up, sexually mutilated, spiky objects being forced into their vaginas, their arms being twisted, their screams recorded: Help!
Socorro!
Porno comic books seemed to me the worst of all, because the sexual torture was idealized and easily accessible, in a realm of unreality and fantasy that seemed dangerous. I presumed that photographs would be so off-putting and disgusting—and such photographs hardly existed, showing torture and death. But anything was possible in the comics, anything could be pictured, and usually was, including bestiality and necrophilia.
“If you are not going to buy that magazine, please put it down,
señor.”
One sunny morning I boarded the ferry at Palma and sailed past the lump of Ibiza under blue skies back to the mainland port of Valencia. It was eight hours, mostly sunshine. There were about thirty of us on the ship that could accommodate fifteen hundred. I sat on deck, scribbling. Inside, a roomful of men watched the day’s bullfight on television, and each time the coup de grace was delivered, the whole length of the matador’s sword driven into the stumbling bull, a thrill of satisfaction went through the room, an intense sigh of passion.
4
The “Virgen de Guadalupe” Express to Barcelona and Beyond
I f a quest for the Holy Grail began in Valencia it would be a very short quest, because the Holy Grail is propped on an altar in a small chapel of the Cathedral, in the Plaza de Zaragoza, in the middle of Valencia. It is the real thing, that was drunk out of by Jesus at the Last Supper, and then passed around to the Apostles. This chalice, teacup size, was carved from greenish agate (chalcedony), as is the base, an inverted cup set with pearls and emeralds, with gold handles, and it is held together by a gold post and jeweled bands. The whole thing is seven inches high, small but complex. The simple cup might have acquired the gold and jewels since Jesus used it. The authorized Cathedral pamphlet offers all this conjecture as fact.
The Last Supper was held in the house of St. Mark. After this, Joseph of Arimathea collected drops of blood in it from Jesus’ crucified body. The cup—usually called the grail—was taken to Rome by St. Peter and it was used as the Papal Chalice until the time of Sixtus II. It was then sent to Huesca by St. Lawrence, first Deacon of the Roman Church, where it stayed until 713. It was carried as part of the portable paraphernalia of the Court of Aragon. In the eleventh century it was in Jaca, in the twelfth century at Juan de la Pena Monastery, in the fourteenth it was taken to Zaragoza by King Martin the Human, and in 1437 it was presented to Valencia Cathedral by Don Juan, the King of Navarre. Most of the churchesin Valencia were vandalized or bombed during the Spanish Civil War (euphemistically called “the National Uprising”), but the grail remained intact. It had been taken out and hidden in the village of Carlet, in the mountains southwest of Valencia, so that it would not be smashed.
It is venerated. It “receives a continuous growing cult … The cup is very ancient work and nothing can be said against the idea that it was utilized by the Lord during the first eucharistic consecration,” J. A. Oñate writes in his definitive book on the subject.
Oh, well, all of this might be true. But even if it isn’t the Holy Grail, the agate cup is much prettier than the chunks of the True Cross that are displayed all over Italy—enough pieces of the cross, it is said, to rebuild the Italian navy.
A priest was saying mass in the Holy Grail chapel each time I took my skeptical self to examine it. This continuous mass struck me as being exactly analogous to the plot device in Paul Bowles’s short story “Pastor Dow at Tacaté,”
How to Knit
is S
& M Monthly
, with page after page of women being tortured, burned, tied up, sexually mutilated, spiky objects being forced into their vaginas, their arms being twisted, their screams recorded: Help!
Socorro!
Porno comic books seemed to me the worst of all, because the sexual torture was idealized and easily accessible, in a realm of unreality and fantasy that seemed dangerous. I presumed that photographs would be so off-putting and disgusting—and such photographs hardly existed, showing torture and death. But anything was possible in the comics, anything could be pictured, and usually was, including bestiality and necrophilia.
“If you are not going to buy that magazine, please put it down,
señor.”
One sunny morning I boarded the ferry at Palma and sailed past the lump of Ibiza under blue skies back to the mainland port of Valencia. It was eight hours, mostly sunshine. There were about thirty of us on the ship that could accommodate fifteen hundred. I sat on deck, scribbling. Inside, a roomful of men watched the day’s bullfight on television, and each time the coup de grace was delivered, the whole length of the matador’s sword driven into the stumbling bull, a thrill of satisfaction went through the room, an intense sigh of passion.
4
The “Virgen de Guadalupe” Express to Barcelona and Beyond
I f a quest for the Holy Grail began in Valencia it would be a very short quest, because the Holy Grail is propped on an altar in a small chapel of the Cathedral, in the Plaza de Zaragoza, in the middle of Valencia. It is the real thing, that was drunk out of by Jesus at the Last Supper, and then passed around to the Apostles. This chalice, teacup size, was carved from greenish agate (chalcedony), as is the base, an inverted cup set with pearls and emeralds, with gold handles, and it is held together by a gold post and jeweled bands. The whole thing is seven inches high, small but complex. The simple cup might have acquired the gold and jewels since Jesus used it. The authorized Cathedral pamphlet offers all this conjecture as fact.
The Last Supper was held in the house of St. Mark. After this, Joseph of Arimathea collected drops of blood in it from Jesus’ crucified body. The cup—usually called the grail—was taken to Rome by St. Peter and it was used as the Papal Chalice until the time of Sixtus II. It was then sent to Huesca by St. Lawrence, first Deacon of the Roman Church, where it stayed until 713. It was carried as part of the portable paraphernalia of the Court of Aragon. In the eleventh century it was in Jaca, in the twelfth century at Juan de la Pena Monastery, in the fourteenth it was taken to Zaragoza by King Martin the Human, and in 1437 it was presented to Valencia Cathedral by Don Juan, the King of Navarre. Most of the churchesin Valencia were vandalized or bombed during the Spanish Civil War (euphemistically called “the National Uprising”), but the grail remained intact. It had been taken out and hidden in the village of Carlet, in the mountains southwest of Valencia, so that it would not be smashed.
It is venerated. It “receives a continuous growing cult … The cup is very ancient work and nothing can be said against the idea that it was utilized by the Lord during the first eucharistic consecration,” J. A. Oñate writes in his definitive book on the subject.
Oh, well, all of this might be true. But even if it isn’t the Holy Grail, the agate cup is much prettier than the chunks of the True Cross that are displayed all over Italy—enough pieces of the cross, it is said, to rebuild the Italian navy.
A priest was saying mass in the Holy Grail chapel each time I took my skeptical self to examine it. This continuous mass struck me as being exactly analogous to the plot device in Paul Bowles’s short story “Pastor Dow at Tacaté,”
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