At
Mrs. Edeltrudes’
Plinio
Corrêa de Oliveira (*)
The French Revolution numbers among her antiquated
enthusiasms. Lafayette, Mirabeau, Danton,
Marat, Robespierre—she jumbles them all in the same
feverish admiration. She still rants against the bloodthirsty rage of Louis XVI
and the bacchanalia of Marie Antoinette. She is sure that when the Bastille was
taken, it was found to be crammed with innocent prisoners who had been wasting
away in inhuman dungeons.
Since that time, the winds of history have ravished
this body of myths to such an extent that, in my view of things, no credence is
given them even by elementary-school teachers in the far backwoods. The
backwoods of São Félix do
But Mrs. Edeltrudes (who, by
the way, admires this restless country bishop) resists the gusts of the winds
of history. She continues, alone but uninhibited, to rant against the apathetic
Louis XVI and the gracious Marie Antoinette as if they were two ogres.
This compact, solid lady, be it understood, is
Catholic. Or at least she thinks she is. In this conviction, she is, moreover,
confirmed by various priests of her acquaintance with whom she converses about
Bishop Casaldáliga and friends of his like.
One day I perceived she had a touch of ardent sympathy
for Luther. The heresiarch's agitation, his unrestrained corpulence and his
lewd manners amuse her. And she deems delightfully biting his cry "los von Rom" (free from
Mrs. Edeltrudes also has a
soft spot for Marx. According to her, the Manifesto of 1848 is at the cutting
edge of progress.
If someone were to show Mrs. Edeltrudes
the contradictions that exist between this anachronistic progress and today's
Paleolithic modernness, if he were to tell her that
whoever reads Bishop Casaldáliga has difficulty in warding off the impression
that the state of the Indians in their tribal settlements is preferable to our
own civilized state, she would say that these were lies. And if someone were to
actually show her a suggestive text (such as the document "Y-Juca-Pirama— The Indian: The One Who Must Die, pp. 21-23,
signed by Bishop Casaldáliga along with five other bishops and six missionary
priests), she would not even permit that such an article to be read to her.
And, with this, imagining herself victorious, she would close the conversation
with a few insolent remarks.
Now picture the following. In the presence of this
animated lady, I distractedly affirmed that the Bastille was found to be empty
—or practically empty— on July 14. She lost no time in calling me
anachronistic, old-fashioned, and so on. And she ended by saying that, for me,
the ideal country would be an immense Bastille, completely surrounded by high
walls behind which men would lead the monotonous and dismal existence of the
condemned.
"Just so!"
I exclaimed. "And there is more. I dream of soldiers armed with the most
modern machine guns and posted in watchtowers alone the walls. At intervals of,
let's say every 20 feet, there would be automatic weapons set up to fire upon
anyone attempting to escape. If someone managed to get by these, he would run
into electric wires. Along the top of the wall, there would be metal blades to
slice through the fingers of those attempting to climb onto it. The insolent
deserter would thus fall to the ground."
I looked Mrs. Edeltrudes in
the eye. She was all aquiver. "That's it!" she sputtered. "It is
a good thing that today you are finally confessing what is really in your
soul! Well did I suspect that these were your thoughts—and the thoughts of all
those devotees of the Holy Inquisitors: your Saint Pius V, your Saint Raymond
of Peñafort, your Saint Peter Arbues". With these words, she incited the onlookers to pelt me
with their disdain and insults.
These onlookers, who have a certain
sympathy for me, were disconsolate at the sight of my manifestation of morbid
cruelty. I, however, felt neither crushed nor intimidated by this robust lady.
Nor did I allow her to trample on me for too long a time.
I said to her: "Don't get so angry, Mrs. Edeltrudes. Or, rather, get angry —get as angry as you can
because you can't get angry enough. But don't get mad at me—because this regime
behind high walls is neither what I would want nor implement. But it has been
implemented by others, who, although strictly speaking not your friends, are
friends of your friends. What I have just described is the new (as if the
existing one were not enough) 620-mile wall that communist
Does the reader think that Mrs. Edeltrudes
exploded?
When she realized the snare I had set for her, her
indignation against the said walls (next to which the Bastille is but a child's
toy) began to diminish. By the end of my description, her expression revealed
that she was finding the idea of such a wall comprehensible and almost
congenial.
But the onlookers were bursting with laughter.
So, to defend herself, Mrs. Edeltrudes
replied: "Dr. Plinio, you are making all this up. It is you reactionaries
and fanatics who invent such stories."
I: "But Mrs. Edeltrudes,
I read all this in the New York Times. It was the unbiased Drew Middleton
who wrote the story."
She: "And am I expected to read the New York Times?"
I: "Not really. But the story was carried in a
popular morning paper in
She: "You are a negative man. You can't leave the
communists in peace."
I: "And what you want for them is tranquility. Of course. They are friends of your friends. `Any friend of
yours is a friend of mine,' goes the old proverb."
Around me, the laughter was subsiding. Everyone
started to speak softly of other matters in order to put Mrs. Edeltrudes more at case. And I also changed the subject.
After all, she was the lady of the house . . .
(*)
This timely article was first published when the Soviets finished reinforcing
the Iron Curtain (“Folha de S. Paulo”,