Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

Mass, I stayed on my knees with my eyes shut tight, just likeeveryone else, but when it was gospel-reading time, the congregationhad to rise. I gathered my strength and made an enormous effort,but as I staggered to my feet, my stomach turned upside down andI threw up all over the church floor. I was immediately escorted tothe infirmary, and then just as quickly home. There was talk ofexpulsion. My father was furious, threatening to call off our trip toCalanda (probably the worst punishment he could have imagined,at least in my eyes); but, ever tender-hearted, he backed down at thelast minute.I remember, too, when I was fifteen and about to take my finalexams, the study hall proctor suddenly giving me a swift kick forno apparent reason. As if that weren't humiliating enough, he followedit by calling me apayasoÑa idiot, a fool. I walked out andtook my exam alone in another room. When I got home that evening,I told my mother that it had finally happened-the Jesuits hadexpelled me at last. My mother rushed to the director, who assuredher that such an idea was sheer fantasy. (It appears I'd gotten thehighest grade in the class on that world history exam, and there wasno thought whatsoever of expelling me.)I, on the other hand, refused categorically to return, and so I wasenrolled at the Institute, the local public high school, where I studiedfor the last two years before my baccalaureate. During those twoyears, I met a law student who introduced me to certain philosophical,literary, and historical works (in cheap editions) that no one atthe Colegio del Salvador had even so much as mentioned. SuddenlyI discovered Spencer, Rousseau, Marx! Reading Darwin's The Originof Species was so dazzling that I lost what little faith I had left (at thesame time that I lost my virginity, which went in a brothel inSaragossa).But I was not the only one who was changing. Since the beginningof World War I, everything around us seemed to be coming apart.Because of the war, Spain was divided into two irreconcilable camps,which were to slaughter each other some twenty years later. The right