The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman Read Online Free PDF

Catullus.’
    He came back with a spring in his step, having been absolved in Latin with the words, ‘You shit less than ten times in a year, and then it’s as hard as beans and lupins and if you rubbed it between your hands you would never soil a single digit.’
    He had also formed the beginnings of a firm friendship with the false priest, who was none other than the wastrel and rapscallion younger brother of Cardinal Dominic Trujillo Guzman. He had studied at the same seminary as Father Garcia, and had been thrown out on account of his absorbing interest in scatological classical literature. His name was Don Salvador, and he knew all the obscene and lascivious passages by heart. Like Father Garcia, he strongly believed in salvation through good times and fornication.

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Ena And The Mexican Musicologist (2)
    DURING THE WEEKS that followed Ena used to appear regularly at dusk, and I very quickly noticed that she had a protean quality about her. On some days she appeared to be slightly plumper than upon others, and I believed that her eyebrows were on some days heavier than upon others. But that was not all, because almost everything about her could be seen to be changing from one day to the next. I found that she would forget things that I had told her the day before, yet remember them weeks later, and often she would ask me the same questions. One day she would take delight in a tune I was playing, and the next she would be dismissive about it and claim that she preferred another which previously she had disliked. Always, however, she would sit cross-legged before me, and study me with her unwavering brown eyes. ‘Ena,’ I asked one day, ‘why do you change so much all the time?’
    Instead of expressing surprise at my question, as I had expected, Ena giggled into her hands and said, ‘Everybody says that. I think it is very funny.’
    ‘I find you most mysterious.’
    ‘O bueno, I like to be mysterious.’
    The next day she brought me two jaguar kittens in a straw basket. She handed them to me by the scruff of the neck, saying, ‘You will never be a real inhabitant of this city unless you have Cochadebajo cats as everyone else does.’
    Normally I detest cats because they make me sneeze, and moreover they detect my dislike and come to sit on me on purpose. I was horrified at being given two of them which would one day grow to be enormous black monsters, but I confess that when I looked at them my heart softened a little, and in any case I was glad of a pretext to kiss Ena upon the cheek in token of gratitude. She blushed momentarily, and her eyes seemed briefly to catch aflame. She put the back of her hand to her cheek where I had kissed it, as if to feel the kissagain, and I felt obliged to rescue her from her confusion by saying, ‘What shall I call them?’
    ‘O,’ she said, ‘I think that they are both girls, so you will call them Ena and Lena, no?’
    ‘Ena and Lena it is, then.’
    Of course the cats rapidly turned my house into a battlefield resounding with squawks and yowlings, and they played incessantly a game which consisted in chasing each other around the rooms without touching the floor, dislodging in the process everything that was upon the shelves and tables. Naturally I did eventually grow to be very fond of them, even when one of them turned out to have been male, and impregnated his sister, so that I ended up being taken over completely by a squad of furry little storm-troopers that grew to be so large that I was obliged to build an extra room onto the house to accommodate them.
    One night I was playing to Ena when I remarked to her, ‘You know, you have completely stopped me from composing,’ and a look of dismay passed over her face.
    ‘O,’ I exclaimed, ‘please do not look so horrified. It is simply that I am so anxious to keep you entertained by learning new pieces, that I no longer spend any time writing music myself.’
    She had a piteous expression as she said miserably, ‘I am