The Flagellant

Life has no meaning. Joy is out of bounds.

***
The Flagellant

The Thursday before Good Friday we spent at the Grandfather's house. Everything was colored in a festive tint. My mother stood in front of the stove, where warm smells rose with the steam from boiling pots to fill the room. My brothers and sisters ran through the house, grouping quickly with cousins by age. I remained in the kitchen listening to my mother make plans with her sisters for the following morning. We would leave early in order to claim choice spots at the side of the road, where we would have a clear view of the passing procession.

My mother left the kitchen and I followed her outdoors, onto the concrete ground of the Grandfather's large courtyard. When one of my uncles, Roland, noticed my mother, he made a dramatic announcement. He intended to be a penitent, a flagellant, someone seeking atonement by offering his back for lashing during the Good Friday celebration . At its conclusion he would allow himself to be mounted onto one of the large wooden crosses. Perhaps even have his palms and feet staked instead of secured by ropes.

My mother said, "But why would you do such a thing?"

Uncle Roland frowned and pointed at himself as if somehow he represented all that was evil and wrong in the world. "I did a lot of terrible things this past year."

"You didn't kill anyone, did you?"

My uncle leaned back against the cinder-block fence and did not answer. He flipped his smoldering cigarette away, then folded his arms and stared down at the ground his sandaled feet stood on.

Later, my father would ask my mother what made Uncle Roland think he might change all of the sudden?

***

In the morning the roosters that roamed the Grandfather's property invaded my dreams, their chattering roused me. I climbed up off the woven palm mat I'd slept on, rolled it neatly and went to the window. Down below, the Cousins and Uncles and Aunts were already in the courtyard preparing for the day's festivities.

I slipped into a pair of cutoffs and raced down the wooden steps. Outside I saw Uncle Roland sitting shirtless on a flipped-over crate. Behind him stood another of my uncles. The other uncle gripped a razor blade, and waved his free arm, shouting in an agitated tone at the Cousins to give him room to work. The tight circle of Cousins that surrounded the Uncles loosened. Standing on the balls of my bare feet, I tried to get a better view of what's happening. I could not see past the crowd, though. Not clearly, anyway. Not over so many heads. So I shinned up a leafy guava tree next to the fence, and tucked myself into a low crotch of branches. From there, while breathing in the fresh odor of ripe fruit, I could see perfectly everything that was happening.

Uncle Roland was bent forward, grimacing. The uncle behind him slowly passed the razor lengthwise down Roland's back, scoring it lightly. Then, to complete the cross design, the Uncle behind Roland ran the razor across Roland's back. Roland stood, squared his shoulders and turned in place. The fresh wounds seeped lightly, and the pink cross marring his flesh seemed to glow in the early morning light.

Someone, one of the Cousins I believe, handed Roland a twist of rope tipped with eight or nine short bamboo sticks. His whip. Uncle Roland gripped the knotted end of the rope and raised it above his head. He began to flay his back. And I blinked each time the bamboo sticks struck. First CLACKING over his left shoulder, then CLACKING over the right, and back again.

The echoing KA-CLACK, KA-CLACK, KA-CLACK seemingly bent the air. Even the roosters had stopped their strutting and squawking to listen.

Now, when Uncle Roland turned so his back was facing me, I saw the blood from his wounds blossom and drip. Uncle Roland nodded that he was ready. A black canvass mask with eyeholes cut out of it was slipped over the top of his head. Each time he sucked in a breath of air, the fabric around his mouth expanded and contracted. One of the Cousins climbed onto the wooden crate and placed a crown of thorns on the top of Roland's head.

***

In addition to the hundreds of Americans who filled the sidewalks with their cameras, there were also many vendors selling what my mother called 'street food.' Vendors behind makeshift stands, or pushing rickety carts loaded with iced drinks and dozens of varieties of local fruits. Along with the everpresent smell of smoldering charcoal and grilling meat, there were the contradicting smells of sweet bread and garbage; ripe fruit and smoke. All permeating the damp gray air. My mother fished some coins from her pocket and handed them to a nearby vendor, who in turn handed my mother banana leaves, in which brown sticky rice cakes were wrapped inside. She had me pass them around to my brothers and sisters and cousins.

When I bit into my spongy ricecake, I noticed kids everywhere, racing by with kites made of newspaper; buying caged chicks whose feathers had been dyed especially for Easter in bright greens or yellows or reds.

When the flagellants finally emerged from the churchyard. I stood on my tiptoes to better observe them marching proudly, single-file, down the center the dusty road. Their whips flew over their shoulders, the bamboo clacking loudly each time it struck their backs. As the first of the flagellants went by in front of me, I cringed at the sight of their blood-streaked backs.

I tried to pick my uncle out from the penitents. It was my mother who spotted him first. He marched toward the rear, his face hidden by the broad straw hat he wore.

My mother gasped loudly. She kicked her sandals off and ran barefoot into the street. Alongside Uncle Roland, she cooled and cleansed his bleeding back with water she ladled from a bucket she'd brought.

I wondered about what might compel someone to self-inflict themselves this way. Did my Uncle Roland really take a man's life? Seeing his sacrifice, I thought about and weighed my own sins. The lies I've told, the people I disliked, the wishing I was somebody else living somewhere else. Suddenly, everything was whisking by me in an agitated blur. I closed my eyes, clasped my hands together, and mouthed a silent prayer.

At the opposite end of the road, the flagellants march came to an end. Uncle Roland removed his mask and collapsed face down on the ground. Several of the flagellants were bound with rope to huge wooden crosses, and then the crosses were hoisted up in the heat and the dust. Uncle Roland was not one of them.

***

Later that evening, back in the courtyard of the Grandfather's house, while my mother washed Uncle Roland's back with stove-boiled water, she asked him if he feels cleansed and pure.

He did not answer.

When she started applying gauze to the wounds, my uncle's face contorted in pain.

“So?” my mother urged.

Very softly, Uncle Roland replied. "I should have let them stake me to the cross."