Holy Tuesday Rouen

This roan that now arrives I have known him forever, I've seen it so many times on this Holy Tuesday… I see the same Nazarene every year, that maybe he hasn't died because he hasn't been born yet. I know this ruán and I know the esparto grass, I know the Nazarene, its wax of darkness, her sandals, his ringless hand, so blue his veins, so white on black, leaning on the chest.

I've been watching it for years on this Holy Tuesday, in this same place, under this orange tree, chapel music of the canary that sings to the lonely balcony in a cage of geraniums. I had shorts and a tin streetcar, a cat on the roof and a monday with school, when this Nazarene passed with his candle. The same Nazarene that he would later contemplate premiering the blood, a girlfriend on my arm, life ahead and the world behind. The one that later one afternoon I taught my son when he barely knew how to ask for candy. The one that without my mother ironing my tunic and without my father hearing saetas on the radio I still see this Tuesday. He's the same as always.

Change everything in Seville, the rouen remains. The esparto remains, the sandal, the wax, the black hood, the embroidered shield, the usual look of the same Nazarene. The silks of that mantle of first stitches and photos in the council room of that time, they passed them a hundred times to new velvet. The golden quarters of that old banner changed for the new, custody and monstrance, sacramental now for that old money, the altarpiece of souls and that hand lantern. The canopy is already different, different way to play that band, now so much joy where before there was only a sad little drum that made the blood of the men on the dock boil with that monotonous and malage singsong.

Although everything has changed, although those corrals no longer have pestiños or glasses of liquor awaiting centuries of Rome and mariquillas; although there is not one of those who in the photo celebrate the quinario with a rice for sale and a Dominican friar with a golden beak, who preaches singing, Well, they say he's a gypsy and people follow him from Radio Sevilla; although that old priest no longer goes preste with candle and breviary behind the new mantle; although that Seville so sepia and so close no longer exists nor does your parents' house exist, the boxes with the front and wedding photos, the baptismal baton, combs her in the attic, shawls wrapped in tissue paper, the tunic that one day will serve as a shroud, you find it now, as usual, infallible.

You know very well those Nazarenes, ruán that remains and to which you now cling the same as that hand the mask catches. The clock in the Plaza hasn't marked a single minute since then: you know when you see the nazarene. He proclaims his victory because time has won, Triumphant Giraldillo carrying a candle instead of a palm on his hip, that gives the light of always.

Is a lie, Those Nazarenes who gave greatness to this centuries-old rite have not died. He told you this afternoon, because it's Holy Tuesday, that high, superb, of stately walks, that you have seen so many times, of rouen and esparto.

The old Nazarenes do not die in Seville. They reincarnate in these that you see on Holy Tuesday. Although nothing is the same in them there are still memories of stopped time. Come, we will, that you are seven years old again and your aunt takes you to see the Nazarenes. Come, get that wax, put your hand, Antonito, caution, Do not burn yourself, how big is the ball. Candy don't ask, that these are silent.

Everything is silent even if it's a cape, that as a cape you open yourself before the bull of time when that ancient rouen passes this afternoon with sections and more sections of dead Nazarenes who wear their shrouds again this Tuesday.

Antonio Burgos. Box
El Mundo de Andalucía, Tuesday 6 April 2004

www.antonioburgos.com

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