started to feel something different, not fire now, not streams of frozen light, but a warm air, and he realized that the fire wasnât down to wickedness but fear, or rather, the fear that precedes wickedness, and so he let her come closer with her hand held out and a few seconds later they touched one another, with the fingers outstretched, and ran their hands over each otherâs bodies as if they were blind, oh yes, my friends, blind with so much fire, but when their cells made contact, his good cells and her tired, sick ones, the good won out, ladies and gentlemen, by a country mile. She stopped spitting out sparks, and in a second her expression was again that of a fragile young girl.
What had happened in Walterâs heart was something very strong, thatâs why he stopped and looked up, and said, and this is very clear in his literature, he said that a cool rain bathed his cheeks and tired eyes, and they joined hands and began walking through the reeds, with an impressive dawn rising over the sea, and at this point, my friends, if you canât see a clear, direct analogy with paradise and the birth of man, then you canât see a damn thing, and I mean that in all sincerity, and they walked hand in hand to the house and once there the girl had a wash and then slept for three days, with young Walter at her side, listening to her pulse to make sure she was still alive and thinking that what was beating in that fragile heart was both their lives.
When she finally opened her eyes he witnessed, in his words, âthe beginning of the world,â because he sensed that what she was seeing was newly created or that she was creating it. And this was how Walter de la Salleâs first acolyte appeared in his life. Her name turned out to be Jessica, Miss Jessica, a young woman who fell out of a strange sky, those skies that in spite of being divine are also, like ours, full of pain and terrible secrets, I donât know if you follow me, my friends, and excuse me if I sometimes wax lyrical in this talk.
Walter installed Miss Jessica in one of the bedrooms on the second floor and from then on they lived together, with the staff, and so the house changed, of course, because the arrival of a woman, however young, always involves bringing good new things to any house, making it into more of a home than a hotel or a temporary stopover.
The young manâs court was beginning to form, my friends, do you see that? Jessica was called to be his Mary Magdalene, because according to Walter himself, and this was said in confidence, she was the first person to refer to him in divine terms, seeing him as someone anointed among men, and telling him, you arenât human, thereâs nothing human in what you do or say or in the way you eat or sleep, youâre a Christ even when you wash your hands, that was what Miss Jessica said to him, and God knows what hell sheâd come from when he met her, because from this point she converted herself into a slave of the Lord, and Iâm not talking about the Lord of the Rings or the Lord of the Flies, but the True Lord, the Boss, the Big Enchilada, the Man Himself, and as incredible as it may seem, her religious conviction set the standard for Walter, because when Miss Jessica revealed to him what he meant to her and how deeply heâd affected her, he himself understood his own path in the world and the task he had ahead of him, and more than that, my friends, and Iâm not trying to make myself out to be a philosopher or anything like that, itâs just that it seems to me that when Miss Jessica revealed Walterâs destiny to him, through her devotion, she also carved out her own path, she found herself, which is the most difficult thing in this life, friends, just ask me, but anyway, having gotten to this point, imagine the scene, a mansion in South Beach with two young people living like brother and sister, like orphans or boarders, with her devoted to