Santiago Gamboa - Necropolis

The scene I saw gave me goose bumps

The young athletes and Walter were stark naked on the couches, having sex in a variety of incredible positions, sucking cocks and balls, the whole thing kept afloat with whiskey and gin, and with a smell of grass that knocked you back; as I was trying to recover my composure I heard a loud nasal snort, and looking to the side of the room saw Miss Jessica lifting her face from a mirror covered in coke, and I don’t know if I dreamed it, but I had the impression that somebody was fucking her in the ass, because what I do remember is that she was in a G-string and her tits were bobbing up and down. I couldn’t speak. I was petrified, I walked to the opposite wall and heard the intruders coming up the main stairs. By a miracle there were already two guards struggling with them, hitting them in the ribs with stun batons, but the women kept coming up. I saw it all unfolding in front of me like someone seeing death, my friends and listeners.

When they heard the women screaming, the guys in the orgy froze and Miss Jessica came to the door, naked. She must have been so zonked out she didn’t know what was going on; the guards looked at her in surprise, because in addition to everything else she was smiling and moving her head in time to a tune. My God, I thought, seeing her with her G-string around her ankles, her mound of Venus shaved, a blood-red circle on her buttocks, as if she’d been sitting on the edge of a wall, and completely out of it. I just wanted to jump out the window onto the ground below to blot out those images. My world had shattered into a thousand pieces and, like a shell floating in a whirlpool, I didn’t know what to do, how to stop it, I wasn’t even sure that all this wasn’t one of Satan’s dirty tricks, but no, it was quite real; I didn’t have the courage to face it, so I went back down the service stairs, without anyone noticing me.

I had to stay away from the house. When, the next day, Walter and Jessica ordered increased security, including electrified fences, I realized that the days of the Ministry were numbered. God would destroy us soon and the only question was, how would he do it? Would He use nuclear warheads, which was the modern way, or would He throw a few thunderbolts? You could smell it in the air. Walter asked me if I’d heard anything the previous night and I said, no, I hadn’t, I’d only woken up at the end, after the guards had intervened and the police had arrived. During lunch, he said that love sometimes took on a destructive form and had to be channeled somewhere; that was what had happened in the house, and we had to remember that. I said yes, shrugged, and went back to my cabin.

For Walter it was a hard blow, something that should have started his brain ticking over, because it threw a beam of light on his great contradiction. I would have liked it if he’d come and talked with me honestly about what was happening, because I could have helped him, but he didn’t. He became reserved and false. His smile was false, and so were his words of optimism. The falsity of words is obvious from listening to them, my friends, prick up your ears and you’ll see, it’s like hitting a wooden surface when there’s nothing behind, the sound bounces and echoes, that’s how hollow words sound. That’s what falsity is. And people must have noticed it, not only me, because things started to go downhill, the ratings dropped, went sharply up and down for a while, then flatlined. At this point, Walter took a couple of decisions that seemed lucid enough, but actually made matters worse, like giving a gold casket to a drowning man. In other words, the things might have been good in themselves, but they didn’t do anything to stop the rot. One of them was the project to spread the word outside the country, going to meet my people on the brother continent, the Land of Delight, Latin America.

The idea was to start in Puerto Rico and travel to the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, and Colombia, sadly skipping over the supreme island, the summit of greatness and enjoyment, my beautiful Cuba, because my cousin the Supreme Bearded One wouldn’t let anyone preaching the word of Christ come anywhere close, oh, what a pity! Walter threw himself into the plans for the journey, advised once again by the Italians, who told him, you have to have a commercial vision, you have to be managerial, efficient, you have to set targets, identify strategic objectives and base your operations on results, you have to optimize and find reliable indicators; Walter’s eyes were opened, and he started to say, let’s decide on objectives, let’s lay down strategies, let’s find reliable indicators. Another important question, according to the Italians, was the question of IMAGE! That was why they hired a small private jet, a Falcon, I think, and put the name of the Ministry on both sides, because one of the consultants said, the Church mustn’t convey the idea of poverty, when did you ever see the Pope traveling economy class? the less you convey the idea of poverty, the more you’ll be listened to, and if anybody criticizes you or talks about ostentation, remember, the word that lights a fire in people’s hearts and cleanses their souls has an obligation to be universal and efficient, and that’s the main thing, the objective; and Walter said: yes, let’s go in the Falcon, let’s be universal, we’re going to cleanse souls. They contacted showbiz promoters in every country and hired sports stadiums, bought advertising space on radio and TV and in national newspapers. I helped write the advertising copy and select the photographs, my brothers, which was more amusing than useful.

The advertising read:

He is coming, He is coming. .

Open your heart to the Supreme Mystery. .

Become part of the Great Ministry.

For peace, the conjunction of souls, and harmony. .

Join the Ministry of Mercy.

If you are lost and cannot see the world,

if your eyes do not help you. .

close them and hear the word

of Reverend Walter de la Salle.

They also had T-shirts, pencils, pamphlets, pennants, posters, and commemorative coins produced, and hired the best lighting, sound, and technical teams that specialized in concerts. Apart from the Italians, Walter invited Jessica and me to travel with him in the Falcon, and sent the samurai in a regular scheduled plane, which they didn’t like one bit. To be honest, I’d have preferred to stay in Miami because I could see the Master’s punishment coming, but I let myself be persuaded because of my desire to see my Land of Delight, which I couldn’t even do in the end because I was too busy organizing the services. The whole thing, as I’ve already hinted, went badly. In Puerto Rico it wasn’t too bad, but in Costa Rica there were three hundred and eight people at the first service and ninety-six at the second. In Panama we didn’t even sell six hundred tickets, and as we’d hired a stadium that seated seven thousand Walter preferred to cancel. There was a scandal in the press and we had to refund the money. As you can imagine, my friends, things went from bad to worse, and Walter was once again a soul suffering in the shadows; if the souls of evil people are black, those of fragile people are gray. Jessica and I would say to him: it’s normal, nobody knows you here yet, your word will reach them but it’s going to take time, and he’d say, where are the management indicators? what did we do wrong? According to the Italians, our calculations for the tour had overestimated the role of the passive element, and he told himself that maybe we should have targeted those strata of society that were more developed from the spiritual point of view. But this was no consolation to Walter, who kept asking himself the same question: why does no one come to me here, whereas they do in the United States, if they’re the same people? what accounted for the difference? why did the people up there never speak to the people down here? He was blinding himself, and would have sudden fits of anger; then he’d lock himself away in the suites rented for him for the tour, without anyone coming to the hotel to look for him or to take photographs or even give him their hand or touch him. The security guys spent their time drinking beer in the lobbies and eating peanuts, because there were never any fans to hold back, no screaming, let alone fainting, and that hurt Walter. God, he would say imploringly, where did they all go? why did you take them? what are you trying to tell me? And I’d say, he isn’t trying to tell you anything we don’t already know, Walter, it’s a problem of space and voice, your voice should win people over, we’ve made a start, more will come, now let’s talk about something else.