Chapter 6 My Hamstrung Adolescence
My Hamstrung Adolescence
With my father vanished and my mother dead, I found myself lost and alone in the world at fourteen, I, Bos Mutas, without a home or way of paying for my education, too young to support myself through work.
So I was lucky to be accepted into the Dominican monastery, where I finished my studies.
I certainly didn’t join them out of vocation.
I wasn’t the type to pray, and my mother hadn’t been either; from her I’d inherited a more or less cordial relationship with God, but not a close one.
The truth is, without imposing any conditions on me, those Dominican monks gave me food, room and board, instruction, and access to a library.
It was a bargain, as they say, a winning lottery ticket that in that moment of extreme necessity and lack of options spurred me to embrace monastic life, almost by chance; I could just as well have joined the army or become a drunk beggar on the corner.
On those too-long silent nights in the novices’ group dormitory, I had plenty of time to cultivate my third-phase encounters with the Queen of Sheba, who sometimes appeared as a gracious halo to accompany me, and, at other times, as an incubus to torment me.
There were frequent crises in which I let myself be carried away by jealousy or rebukes of her.
But she’d forgive me and, in my moments of greatest sadness, rise from the mist, wave her arms, and sing: “Tell me, lonely boy, why so much pain?”
I suppose that, as a candidate for the religious life, I should have adored the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
But instead, I adored the Queen of Sheba.
At the end of the day, why should I trust those male gods, when I had no particularly nice paternal memories; let’s just say my father’s bad temper was set off by everything I did: losing games, being shy with women, writing with my left hand, not knowing how to whistle, and, above all, wearing pajamas.
It bothered my father that I slept in pajamas and not like a man, that is to say, like him, stripped down to underwear.
Anything that had to do with me was a disappointment, a source more of unease than rage, but still enough to make my life miserable.
The catch was, now that I was in the monastery, I had to pray, and I felt better about worshipping a female deity; in that sense I took after Gérard de Nerval, my spiritual guide.
Nerval, an anxious poet, devoted himself to pursuing impossible lovers such as opera divas, Asian goddesses, theater actresses, and all kinds of distant, extravagant beings.
As I was plugged into the same neurosis, I followed that same path, which is how Patti Smith became the Queen of Sheba in my hamstrung adolescence.
For months I’d been searching art books in the monastery’s library for the many paintings that had been made over the centuries of the Queen of Sheba, but none of them seemed plausible.
Not the ones where she’s kneeling before a king more powerful than her, nor looking like a prostitute or penitent saint, in chaste clothing or half naked in anklets and nose rings.
None of those worked for me; they simply weren’t her, they didn’t speak to her real and true appearance, at once beautiful and strange, fresh and archaic, kind and fearsome, and it was frustrating not to be able to give my chimera a face.
Until one day, by chance, in a random magazine, I came across a photo of Patti Smith.
As soon as I saw her, a small voice in my head said: It’s her.
I had the wild, stunned sense that Patti Smith, the punk rock goddess, was the new Queen of Sheba, novae reinae Sabae!
I’d finally succeeded in capturing the image of my mystical, erotic fever dreams. There she was, before my eyes: an aggressive, tempting woman with an ambiguous, androgynous sex appeal, a calm, cold gaze, wild black hair, legs for miles, thin with sumptuous breasts and a secret aura that said, No one can stop me, no one.
I clung to that photo like a holy relic; I cut it out carefully and kept it between the pages of my copy of The Imitation of Christ. The other novices also had their favorite saint cards tucked into missals and breviaries, but theirs were pious.
The Madonna of the Goldfinch, painted by Raphael.
Or The Good Shepherd, by Murillo, where a smiling boy embraces an also-smiling sheep.
Those ones were fine and nice, but others weren’t.
One in particular comes to mind, called The Child of Sorrow.
In it, a boy of about seven carries the cross of his own martyrdom on his back.
I’d thought of myself as the true child of sorrow, but this one beat me handily!
Regina Sabae. Almost thirty years after she first burst into my life on that cruise down the Nile, she still unsettled me.
She, or that, or it, or whatever it was—old woman or girl, monster or goddess, legend or real history.
Somehow, she was the key to something rooted deep inside me, a part of me I couldn’t know until I searched and failed to find it.
I didn’t know where that obsession would take me, but I was sure it was taking me somewhere.
Not that I thought about it constantly. The apparition came and went, keen or blurred, and sometimes it even disappeared altogether.
What I’m trying to say is, some obsessions persist. Even if they fade, they find a way to return, and in the long run they don’t leave you.
It could be believed that the Queen of Sheba was a phantom presence for me, like a child’s imaginary friend.
But no. That’s not it. It’s more than that.
She exists as a person who’s clearly visible in my constant dreaming, as an unmistakably human reality. 1
If anyone remembers me when I die, they can say: Bos Mutas was the man who loved the Queen of Sheba.
I can’t explain it more than that, I hope it’s enough for now.