excerpt
And so I prayed.
To deny myself at that point meant quelling the abhorrence I felt
toward my countrymen and replacing it with love. I needed to clean
the crystal ofmysoul of all intention, so that the pure light of God could
shine through me, like the sun through a window into a dark room.
I tried, I really did. But when I descended into the valley, carrying
my little medicine chest under my arm, in case I should find a
moribund Christian to whom I could offer spiritual comfort, the
expanse of unnecessary death and pain sickened me.
“Are you a Christian?” I asked of those who could still talk,
mostly Indians.
A few spat at me, others looked beyond me. I was amazed to find
only two Spaniards, two harquebusiers who must have fallen
during the first round of arrows.
It pained me to simply pass by most men, but my desire to help
someone and offer him absolution of his sins before he died kept
me going, though I was sadly aware of all the souls that would not
be saved.
“Are you a Christian?” I kept asking. I found a young native man
whom I recognized as one of our party. He had received several
blows from macanas: his head was cracked open and his entrails had
spilled onto the ground. Iridescent flies feasted on the pool of gore
underneath him.
He nodded, shivering and bathed in sweat. “Are you? Good,” I
said, regretting the word ‘good’ as soon as it left my mouth. My
hands trembled as I opened the chest and extracted the ampulla
containing the oleum infirmorum. “Can you talk?”
He nodded and moaned horribly, his eyes wandering aimlessly.
He made a convulsive attempt at confession, and I absolved him
forthwith, giving him the viaticum and anointing his eyelids,
saying, “Through this holy unction and His own most tender mercy may
the Lord pardon thee whatever sins or faults thou hast committed by sight,”
and repeating it with his ears, nostrils, lips, hands, feet and loins.
I raised my head and saw Pánfilo checking on the dead with his
harquebus hanging from his shoulder and his dagger at the ready.
Manolis Aligizakis 