"Don't worry," Iketemar said to Šin, "I don't think you'd have liked the others. You are a devotee here, after all - a deacon, perhaps? you must forgive my ignorance - and the other two have no interest in culture. Football seems to be Mr. Laakonen's one and only true love - no, that and television, my apologies, he talks about these cheap, vulgar foreign productions constantly. There was one called Jersey, or something like that, I do not pay very much attention to these things, they are below me, that he was complaining about just yesterday. He was saying that it had gone very downhill in quality after the eighth season or so. But I can't imagine that someone as enlightened and cultured as you must be could care about such things as that! I suppose it would make you happy that it was I who convinced him to stay away at the end. I'm sure you would have been very annoyed to deal with someone like that."
"Ms. Virejane is a little better, but not by much," she continued, her tongue running, her words careening outwards at light speed. "She is always busy with paperwork - she's always filling out forms and signing things - and never seems to have time for anything else. Imagine - here, as you conduct your rites, Mr. Laakonen going around trying to talk about the latest match or whatever as Ms. Virejane wanders about aimlessly, writing things down on her papers! I can't even begin to fathom the disrespect you would feel! But I am a very respectful person; you can be assured I will give your festival, and of course your wonderful religion, all the gravitas they deserve."
She was slightly disappointed to be so rudely interrupted by the priest, but all her indignation was swept away by the great spectacle she saw before her.
The dancing, the dancing, oh, the dancing! Marvelous motion, in dynamic circles widening; a carnival of color and devotion, a kaleidoscopic blossoming of the purest possible concentrate of faith. She could already hear the beginnings of what was sure to be her next composition, a simple theme, no, themes - this extraordinary rite could not be contained in one strain, one melodic line. From this alone she could see a whole suite - an opera, yes, an opera, she would have to talk with a librettist immediately - arising. Amazing, amazing! Her breath caught in her throat as her eyelids froze; her whole being was so enraptured by this smallest fragment of the great ceremony of worship before her that the ability to perform such lowly bodily functions as breathing and blinking had left her.
Even after the President - like a sprite, she thought, an angel, a fragment of divine light that still, somehow, shone as brightly as it had in the heavens above - had stopped her dancing Iketemar still found herself transfixed, a part of her mind still lost in the fire, the revelry, the faith, the music. She found herself perceiving the world as though the air had become a thick syrup - everything so beautifully slow and distorted, elevated by a ritual that seemed to have brought Paradise to Earth.
"Madam President," Iketemar said, her voice high and breathy, "I have to say, what an extraordinary, spiritual festival. It is wonderful to find such faith and such beauty in our world - they are endangered, I feel, everyone seems so busy trying to root them out in favor of things, words, like "productivity" and "industry," - and so, well, I can hardly believe it - that this is here, that you have managed to restore it."
"Now, I do not like to speak ill about people - it is already a bad thing, and to do it at a place, a time, like this would make it even worse - but I have to say that I do not share your sadness over our former Head of State. He complained too much, and was very fickle - and he certainly was not someone interested in the matters of the spirit. There was nothing, I think, and it was very sad, he despised more than the matters of the spirit. He hated religion, he hated music, he hated dance - everything beyond the material world and what he called "reason" he wanted to do away with. I suppose it was a complex of his. He had many complexes - I think it was because of his upbringing, his parents were not very fit, I believe, poor man. But nevertheless, I found it a terrible thing, especially when it led him to persecute me."
The Kingdom of Spain
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