Knapp Jones, Willis

English

University of New Mexico

New Mexico Quarterly
Volume 15 | Issue 3 Article 4
1945
Professional Mourner, Juan Jose Morosoli
Willis Knapp Jones
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Recommended Citation
Knapp Jones, Willis. "Professional Mourner, Juan Jose Morosoli." New Mexico Quarterly 15, 3 (1945).
https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/vol15/iss3/4
.~..
PROFESSIONAL MOURNER
Juan Josi Morosoli
Translated by Willis Knapp ]ones
T HERE HAVE BEEN MANY professional mourners, but none likeNatividad Vega. She knew how t~ playa wake as one plays a
guitar. She could put new ~nergy into the mourning when it was
dying down, ~hen the crowd of women in the dead man's room were
nodding and beginning to mumble, lulled by the very monotony of
their praying which, in itself, is a lullaby. She knew how to draw
out moans and bring relief when one of the relatives got choked up
with heartfelt but unuttered cries, a perilous condition which is apt.
to have bad effects. With a cup of herb tea and some comforting words,
she could always ease the anguish. Natividad was really pricelessowhen
it came to ·holding a successful wake over tht; dead.
When the late Pedro Denis' came to his end-the fellow who
couldn't get along with his wife-Mrs. Denis said that she ~Cwasn't going
to look at him again, even in his bqrial clothes." . People went hunting
for her~ to have her take her farewell of the corpse, but she said right
out loud [0 Benito Pena, "If they'll let me laugh out loud, I'll go to
his funeral."
~ ~
Mrs. Denis was one of those women who lose their souls at the
threshold of earth and find them again at the <;loot as they are leaving
this world, but even in this woman, Natividad .produced tears.
At seven o'clock in the evening Denis died, and by eight o'clock
the women were thronging in, pushing the tables around to make
room for the flowers, or rushing to find smelling salts to give the
widow, .who was having an attack of nerves. And afterward they had
a pencil sketch of the dead man made by a man who took magazine
subscriptions. He used to give a pencil sk€tch as a premium. Nobody
read the literature. They bought it to get the picture.
276
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Knapp Jones: Professional Mourner, Juan Jose Morosoli
Published by UNM Digital Repository, 1945
PROFESSIONAL MOURNER 277
Natividad was slight, with. flat breasts, straight as a board, with
wasp hips and with feet toeing in like magpies'. Her only companion
was a hairless dog, one of those th.~.t are allowed to sleep at a person's
feet in winter to ward off colds and rheumatism. Once she had had a
husband.
The same thing happened to her that had happened to so many
. women a?out the same time: she married a sturdy Italian, one of those
fellows who immigrated in answer to the advertisements and when \
they couldn't find any more work, they went away~ t04Jsing back a
"Look for me again wli~n you see me." People said the men already
had wives back in Italy. ,
What Natividad liked best was to drink deep draughts of dawn air.
She would supply everybody with endless cups of herb tea all night.
Nobody ev~r heard her say, "Thank you.." because she was always
serving others, and preparing anise seed cookies to go with the tea.
But when the sky began to brighten with the dawn, the crowd used
. to descend on her.
"Aren't you going to eat anything, Miss Natividad? The' whole
night on 'an empty stomach!"
. And she would reply: "Well, put a piece of meat oyer the coals,
will you?" .
Natividad in her black gown with its few strands of fringe would
then take her place at the '£oot of the corpse.
"Let's give thanks to Heaven for our friend's first day in Heavenl"
Then she would raise her arms, and her flowing black sleeves would
look like the fluttering of wings. .
"Put out the candles!" she would tell the candle snuffer. "Close
his eyes so that God may take the. soul of the late lamented." And
then, after a brief pause: "All right. Light the lights again. Now
Ii!> • •
the poor soul is at rest. I'll go and sink my teeth into something."
In the grassy yard, amid, the glistening tracks of worms and snails,
with the scent of fennel and pine about her as the birds were awaking,
Natividad would stand beside the blossoming cactus and while the
sun glinted on the broken glass on top of the wall (put there'so the
.youngsters couldn't climb over and steal the fruit) she would eat
. the barbe'cued C meat slowly, setting her teeth into a morsel of it, held
between two. slices of bread, and cutting off a lllouthful with a knife.
The sound of the church bells seemed to release. clouds of pigeons
that winged wide over the fields.
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New Mexico Quarterly, Vol. 15 [1945], Iss. 3, Art. 4
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NEW MEXICO QUARTERLY REVIEW
Through the door of the dead man's house all sorts of people
thronged in to sign the visitors' book and gaze a moment in silence:
his gambling friends, chased by daylight from the cafe, with their
faces drawn after a night of play, and his companions from the meat-
packing plants, summoned to their work by the gEorious light of
mornIng.
Natividad also disappeared when daylight came. She had a deep
and ancient friendship with' the night. '
As the years passed, Natividad shriveled with age in the same
way that the black wings of her gown appeared to en~arge. Amid the
candles at each corner of the corpse, she seemed a butterfly whose flying
days were over.
Her prayef-The Fifth Credo-became more feeble, like the flame
in the cherry-red brazier which she covered with ashes when she went
out, so that it might heat the room without dying out.
No longer inspired by her, the chorus of mourners sounded more
like the buzzing of listless bees. "The Gir!," a forty-year-old woman
" whom Natividad used to bring with her to teach her the craft ("Some
day i'll be leaving, too," she used to say), tried to animate them with
the opening words: "Almighty Father-" And Natividad with a cup of
herb tea in her hand, took up the prayer: ""':"'who art come to judge
the quick and the dead!"
She would wave her arms, sprinkling holy water on the corpse, but
her gestures grew continually more feeble.
When the candles sent out streamers of light, "There's something
wrong with these candles," she would say. "Why don't you snuff
them, girl?"
And the othet would reply: "It's your eyes, Miss Natividad.
They're just flickering a bit."
In addition, she would hurry the entrance' of the late lamented
into Heaven, not waiting till dawn for the ceremony, as she used to.
Besides, she refused to attend wakes very far fro.m her home and no
longer offered her services to the very poor.
One time, in hurrying the mourning ritual, she caught her long
black sleeve in the seven-branched candlestick and knocked it onto tIle
floor.
"Confound it!" exclaimed Vicenta,' the new professional mourner.
"Can't you see the candles?"
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Knapp Jones: Professional Mourner, Juan Jose Morosoli
Published by UNM Digital Repository, 1945
PROFESSIONAL MOURNER 279
One June dawn, while the constellation of the Southern Cross
still gleapled in the clear winter sky, the dog howled in the old
mourner's room. Natividad had remained quiet and tiny under her
bedclothes, her thinning grey hair cold about· her sunk~n temples.
The black cloak, hanging open on a chair, looked like two wings
withou"t a body.
NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Juan Jose Morosoli, born in Minas, Uruguay, of Swiss parents, in 1899, is a
shy, likable man who remains ~Minas as a protest against the belief that literary
people should flock to the capital, Montevideo. But even away from Uruguay's
main literary stream, he has found success. Beginning as a newspaperman at the
age of twenty, he wrote poetry in his spare time and in 1925 published his first
volume, Balbuceos' .(Babblings). Three years later appeared Los juegos (Games)1
a book for children. Then deciding, as he expressed it, "No nad poeta (I wasn't
born a poet)," he turned to prose. His first attempt, the novel Hombres (Men)1
won the 1932 national prize offered by the Uruguayan Ministry of Public Instruc-
tion and broke precedent by even going into a second edition, in 1942.. 'In 1936
he published Los Albaniles de los Tapes (Tapes Masons) (Indians who helped build
Montevideo), a collection of short stories and local-color sketches, including "La
Rezadora," the plotless sketch above,' translated ·as it appeared reprinted in the
September 24. 1936, Sund~y issue of Montevideo's newspaper La Manana. "La.
Rezadora" is based on a custom still continuing in some parts of Uruguay where
mourners are hired to be sure that wakes for the dead go off with a flourish.
This translation is published with the express permission pf the author.
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New Mexico Quarterly, Vol. 15 [1945], Iss. 3, Art. 4
https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/vol15/iss3/4


Professional Mourner, Juan Jose Morosoli

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Professional Mourner, Juan Jose Morosoli

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