João Goytortúa and Jesús Uvalde Ribeiro poach quail and redbreast in the gully between the five-mile and the stumps-end. Unbeknown to Uvalde Ribeiro, Goytortúa has arranging an assignation with the owner and sole proprietor of the Vincennes Glove Co. Goytortúa plans to buy into the business with an eye to cornering the needle and thread market. If Jesús Uvalde Ribeiro were to get wind of João Goytortúa’s plan he would beat him senseless, then leave him for dead in a culvert somewhere. As the chances of this happening are miniscule, neither João or Ribeiro having met, it seems frivolous to give it a seconds’ thought. Jesús Uvalde Ribeiro and João Goytortúa, however, will crop up from time to time, as the odds of two Christian names beginning with J appearing on the same page are astounding.
His left foot piloting him forward the man in the hat took in the beautiful and not so beautiful things of the world. ‘Nature makes the rules we... break them...’ he said, his right foot lagging behind his left. ‘then we die thinking we’ve changed something, when all we’ve done is pushed a few things around’.
Cocksfooted, El Pozo pushes his way up the sideways. The last time El Pozo came in from the hive (people came from all over for a jar of his honey. Or. El Pozo lives under a honey tree, the bees making combs in his mutinous unruly hair) he ate enormous platefuls of fish, boiled potatoes and blackened bread, washing it down with schooners of Mickelbee’s Ale. This time El Pozo had come to see his love Altisidora Monroy de Pizarro y Cortés with whom he hoped to undo a noche triste. The year before El Pozo and y Altisidora met under a baker’s moon. El Pozo, in his haste to undo Pizarro y’s corset snapped one of the ivory stays, the pointed end stabbing the poor woman in the spleen. He had hoped to right this undoing by meeting with Altisidora Monroy de Pizarro y Cortés on the steps of the Church of the Perpetual Sinner, where he planned to offer his heartfelt condolences for the pain he had caused her the previous year. With him, stowed at the bottom of his satchel, he carried a page torn from a book which he planned to bestow upon his love Altisidora Monroy de Pizarro y Cortés as a token of his undying love for her. The page read as follows:
GOVERNOR. Please sit down, ladies and gentlemen. Ho, “Mishear”, bring some more chairs in.
The Guests seat themselves.
(Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Der Revisor)
His left foot piloting him forward the man in the hat took in the beautiful and not so beautiful things of the world. ‘Nature makes the rules we... break them...’ he said, his right foot lagging behind his left. ‘then we die thinking we’ve changed something, when all we’ve done is pushed a few things around’.
Cocksfooted, El Pozo pushes his way up the sideways. The last time El Pozo came in from the hive (people came from all over for a jar of his honey. Or. El Pozo lives under a honey tree, the bees making combs in his mutinous unruly hair) he ate enormous platefuls of fish, boiled potatoes and blackened bread, washing it down with schooners of Mickelbee’s Ale. This time El Pozo had come to see his love Altisidora Monroy de Pizarro y Cortés with whom he hoped to undo a noche triste. The year before El Pozo and y Altisidora met under a baker’s moon. El Pozo, in his haste to undo Pizarro y’s corset snapped one of the ivory stays, the pointed end stabbing the poor woman in the spleen. He had hoped to right this undoing by meeting with Altisidora Monroy de Pizarro y Cortés on the steps of the Church of the Perpetual Sinner, where he planned to offer his heartfelt condolences for the pain he had caused her the previous year. With him, stowed at the bottom of his satchel, he carried a page torn from a book which he planned to bestow upon his love Altisidora Monroy de Pizarro y Cortés as a token of his undying love for her. The page read as follows:
GOVERNOR. Please sit down, ladies and gentlemen. Ho, “Mishear”, bring some more chairs in.
The Guests seat themselves.
(Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Der Revisor)
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