As you will recall from the beginning of the letter, Matías was the old man who loved the boy best and was so grieved by his disappearance that many feared he might lose his mind. And there in the inn, hearing those words and what he went on to say, no one doubted that this was exactly what had happened. For in his view, the white boar was none other than our lost boy, none other than Javier, who, because of the sad life he had led as a human being, had changed his very nature. It seems he argued his case as follows:
“Didn’t you see the way he stopped in the square to watch the boys playing in the snow? Isn’t that just what Javier used to do? And, again just like Javier, didn’t the boar have a purple stain around its snout?”
Those who were present say that the old man’s speech was followed by a heated discussion, with some hunters denying that the boar had any such stain and others passionately affirming that it had. Now tell me, dear friend, can you imagine anything more foolish? What kind of a person is it who raises not the slightest objection to the idea of the boy’s metamorphosis and believes, therefore, that it was indeed Javier hiding beneath the boar’s rough coat, and yet grows irate and argumentative over the incidental detail of a birthmark. But, as you well know, superstition still lingers in places like Obaba and just as the stars continue to shine long after they are dead, the old beliefs …
The first ten lines of the sixth page are completely illegible and we can learn nothing of what happened in the days following the boar’s first appearance. We can, on the other hand, find out what happened later, since the latter part of page six and the whole of page seven are perfectly conserved.
… but one night the boar returned to Obaba and, gliding through the shadows, made its way to a solitary house situated some five hundred yards from the square. Once outside the house, it began to beat and gnaw at the door, emitting such furious grunts that the people who had been sleeping inside were dumbstruck and unable to call for help, so great was the terror that gripped them.
I should not say that the animal acted with criminal intent for I know it is wrong to attribute to animals faculties that are proper only to men. And yet I am sorely tempted to do so. How else explain its determination to enter the house? How else explain the damage it caused to the livestock when it saw that it could not break down the door?… for I should tell you that, before disappearing back into the woods, the boar killed a horse and an ox kept by the inhabitants in a nearby outhouse. But I am not proud and I know that only our Father can know the true reasons behind such behavior.
After what had happened, the hunters’ anger was roused and many who until then had remained calm decided to throw in their lot with the hunting parties that had already been established. And, as ever, old Matías was the one dissenting voice. He went out into the streets and pleaded with those setting off for the woods:
“Leave the boar in peace! You’ll only enrage him by doing this! Javier will recognize you!”
The hunters responded with violence, forgetting it was an old man they were dealing with, an old man speaking to them, moreover, out of his delirium. Then they continued on their way. But you should not judge their rudeness and their intemperance too harshly. For, as I explained, they were quite beside themselves with terror. They feared the boar would continue to attack their livestock, livestock that is on the whole of the poorest quality, so poor it barely provides enough to feed and clothe them. But Matías had his reasons too:
“Javier has nothing against you! He only attacks those who did him harm before!”
Unfortunately for everyone concerned, what the old man said was not pure madness. For the family the boar had attacked was the least Christian in Obaba, its members having for generations been much given to cruelty, a propensity they gave full rein to during the last war. Often, when they got drunk at the inn, they had made Javier the butt of their cruelty, mocking and even beating him, for evil always vents itself on the weak. But was there a connection between the two facts? Should I entirely disregard what the old man said? These were the questions I asked myself, the questions that tormented me.
Mothers in Obaba tell their children a story in which a daughter asks her wicked father if he believes he will ever die. The father tells her that this is most unlikely because, as he explains: “I have a brother who is a lion and lives in the mountains and inside that lion is a hare and inside that hare is a dove. That dove has an egg. If someone finds that egg and breaks it on my forehead, then and only then will I die.” However, the person listening to the story knows that the little servant of the house will discover the connection between all those things and that the father, who is in fact a demon, will die. But I lacked the little servant’s ingenuity and was unable to answer my own questions. Perhaps I was slow; perhaps the thread that led from the boar to Javier was more difficult to find than that linking the father’s life to the dove’s egg.
However, subsequently, things happened so quickly that there was little time for reflection. For on the third day of the hunt, the boar pursued and wounded a straggler from one of the hunting parties.
The letter continues on the eighth page of which the top half is well preserved, the sheet having been placed the other way up from the preceding pages. Of the lower part, however, about eight lines remain illegible.
The man’s companions considered that the white boar had again acted with prudence and discernment, waiting among the leaves and watching the party until one of them, the man whom he later wounded, was alone and defenseless. Old Matías summed up the thoughts of all of them:
“It would be best if from now on you cover your faces. Especially those of you who did Javier wrong. It’s clear he wants vengeance.”
It was on one such day that I suddenly realized that spring was upon us and that the fields were fragrant and full of the lovely flowers the Creator provides us with. But for me and for the other inhabitants of Obaba that whole garden of flowers bloomed in vain; no flower could perform its true function there, no flower could serve as a balm to our spirits. The pinks and lilies in the woods were born alone and died alone because no one, not the children or the women or even the most hardened of the men, dared go near them; the same fate awaited the mountain gentians, the thickets of rhododendrons, the roses and the irises. The white boar was sole master of the land on which they grew. One of the broadsheets published in your own town put it welclass="underline" “A wild animal is terrorizing the small village of Obaba.” And do you know how many nights it came down to visit us only to …
The eighth page stops here. Fortunately the next two pages are perfectly legible. In this final part of the letter, Canon Lizardi’s handwriting becomes very small.
… what Matías had foretold came to pass with the exactitude of a prophecy. Night after night, without cease, with the resolve of one who has drawn up a plan and does not hesitate to carry it out, the white boar continued to attack the houses of those who were members of the hunting parties. Then, when panic had filled every heart, the old man came to see me at the rectory. The moment he came in, he said: “I’ve come to ask you a question and the sooner I have your answer the better. I want to know if I can kill the white boar?”