The Seville Communion

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  "Yes. There are a couple of things I want to talk to him about."

  "Good. We can enjoy your company a little longer." The crickets were chirping again, and the old lady listened, her face towards the garden. "Have you found out who put our postcard in your room?"

  Quart took the card from his pocket and placed it on the table. "No," he said, feeling Macarena's eyes on him. "But at least now I know what it means."

  "Do you really?" Cruz Bruner opened and shut her fan, then tapped the postcard with it. "In that case, while you wait for Don Priamo, maybe it would be a good time for us to put the card back in Carlota's trunk."

  Quart looked at the two women, undecided. Macarena stood up and waited, holding the card, with the moon behind her. He got to his feet and followed her through the courtyard and garden.

  From the pigeon loft they could see clouds brushing the moon. The city below looked unreal. Like an old stage set, the roofs of Santa Cruz stretched away in terraces, with planes of shadow interrupted here and there by a light in a window, a distant street lamp, a terrace hung with washing - shrouds in the darkness. Illuminated, La Giralda rose up in the background as if painted on a dark backdrop. Seen through the long white net curtains billowing gently in the breeze, the belfry of Our Lady of the Tears appeared very near, almost within reach.

  "The breeze doesn't come from the river but from the sea," said Macarena. "It comes up at night, from Sanlucar." She took the lighter from under her bra strap and lit a cigarette. The smoke floated out through the windows. Insects fluttered round the lamp. "This is all that's left of Carlota Bruner," she said, indicating the open trunk in the lamplight.

  It was full of objects: lacquer boxes, beads of jet, a porcelain figurine, broken fans, a very old and threadbare lace mantilla, hatpins, whalebone stays, a fine silver-link handbag, opera glasses, faded fabric flowers from a hat, albums of photographs and postcards, old illustrated newspapers, boxes made of leather and cardboard, a strange pair of long red chamois gloves, tattered old books of poetry and school exercise books, wooden bobbins for lace-making, a very long braid of light chestnut hair, a catalogue for the Universal Exposition in Paris, a piece of coral, a model of a gondola, an old tourist guide to the ruins of Carthage, a tortoiseshell comb, a glass paperweight containing a little seahorse, Roman coins, and several other silver coins bearing the likenesses of Isabel II and Alfonso XIL And there were the letters - a thick packet tied with ribbon. Macarena untied the bow and handed them to Quart. There must have been about fifty: almost two-thirds were letters; the rest were postcards. The ink had faded on the brittle, yellow paper and in places was almost illegible. None bore a postmark. They were all written in Carlota's fine, sloping hand and addressed to Captain Manuel Xaloc, Port of Havana, Cuba. "There aren't any from him?''

  "No." Kneeling by the trunk, Macarena took some of the letters and glanced over them, her cigarette between her fingers. "My greatgrandfather burned them when they arrived. It's a pity. We have her letters but not his."

  Sitting in one of the old armchairs, with shelves of books behind him, Quart looked through the postcards. They were all popular views of Seville, like the one left in his hotel room: Triana Bridge, the port with the Torre del Oro and a schooner moored in front of it, a poster for the feria, a reproduction of a painting of the cathedral. I'm waiting for you, I'll always wait for you, with all my love, always yours, I wait to hear from you, all my love, Carlota. He took a letter from an envelope. It was dated the eleventh of April, 1896.

  Dear Manuel,

  I can't resign myself to not hearing from you. I am certain that my family is intercepting your letters as I know that you have not forgotten me. Something in my heart, like the quiet ticking of your watch, tells me that my letters and hopes do reach their destination. I will give this letter to a maid whom I believe to be trustworthy, and hope that my words will reach you. With them I repeat my message of love and my promise to wait for you always, until you return at last.

  How long it seems since you left, my love! Time passes and I still wait for one of the ships sailing upriver to bring you to me. Life must, I'm sure, prove generous to those who suffer so much as a result of trusting in her.

  At times my courage fails me and I weep in despair, sure that you will never return. That you have forgotten me, despite your promise. See how -unfair and silly I can be ?

  I wait for you always, each day, in the tower from which I watched you leave. At siesta time, when all are asleep and the house is silent, I come up here and sit in the rocking chair, and watch the river. It is very hot, and yesterday I thought I saw the galleons move in the paintings on the stairs. I dreamed, too, of children playing on a beach. I think these are good omens. Perhaps at this very moment you are on your way back to me.

  Return soon, my love. I need to hear your laugh, to see your white teeth, and your strong, brown hands. And to see you look at me as you do. And to have you kiss me as you once did. Please return. I beg you. Return or I will die. I feel that I am already dying inside.

  All my love, Carlota

  "Manuel Xaloc never read this letter," said Macarena. "Or any of the others. She kept her sanity another six months, and then everything went dark. She wasn't exaggerating: she was dying inside. When at last he came to see her and sat in the courtyard in his blue uniform with gold buttons, Carlota was already dead. She didn't recognise him. She was just a shadow."

  Quart put the letter back in its envelope. He felt embarrassment for having intruded on the intimacy of the letter's words of love that were never answered.

  "Would you like to read more?" asked Macarena.

  He shook his head. The curtains billowed still in the breeze that came up the Guadalquivir from Sanlucar, and through them he caught a glimpse of the church tower. Macarena sat on the floor, leaning against the trunk, rereading some of the letters. Her black hair shone in the lamplight. Quart admired the curve of her neck, her tanned skin, her bare feet in the leather sandals. She exuded such an intense warmth that he had to stop himself from reaching out and touching her neck.

  "Look at this," she said.

  She held out a piece of paper. It was a sketch of a ship beneath the words: ARMED CUTTER, THE MANIGUA. Below the sketch was a list of the specifications of the ship, obviously copied from a periodical of the time, all in Carlota's hand.

  1886

  Year of construction, England

  341

  Tons of displacement

  47

  Length

  2.2

  Draft

  1,800

  H.R Moving power

  22

  Knots

  Range

  1,800 miles at 10 knots

  Armaments

  2 of 47 (to stern)

  1 of 75 (in the centre)

  Crew

  27 men (3x4 gunners)

  Macarena handed him a folder tied with ribbon. "This dates from later on. My grandfather put it in the trunk after Carlota died. It's an epilogue to the story."

  Quart opened the folder. It contained several cuttings from newspapers and illustrated magazines, all dealing with the end of the Spanish-American war and the naval defeat of July 3,1898. A front page from La Ilustracion showed an engraving of the destruction of Admiral Cervera's squadron. There was also a page with an account of the battle, a map of the coast of Santiago de Cuba, and pictures of the principal chiefs of staff and officers killed in the battle. Amongst them Quart found the one he was looking for. The engraving was of poor quality, and a note from the illustrator stated that it had been "drawn based on reliable accounts". It showed a good-looking man with sad eyes, his jacket buttoned to the neck. He had short hair, a large moustache and sideburns. He was the only officer dressed in civilian clothes, and it seemed as if the illustrator had tried to emphasise that this man wasn't a proper member of Cervera's squadron. Captain of the Merchant Navy Mr Manuel Xaloc Ortega, commander of the Manigua. Xaloc stared into space, as if indifferent to being listed among the he
roes of Cuba. Below, on the same page, was the text:

  The Infanta Maria Teresa, having withstood the concentrated fire of the American squadron for almost an hour, ran aground in flames on the coast. Meanwhile, the other Spanish ships set sail from the Port of Santiago, between the forts of El Morro and Socapa, and were immediately greeted by artillery fire from Sampson's battleships and cruisers, whose strength was overwhelming. The Oquendo, its entire port-side ablaze, guns unfixed, bridges and superstructure almost destroyed and with a large number of dead and wounded on board, passed before its flagship, which had run aground. Unable to continue, its commander (Commodore Lazaga) fallen, the Oquendo ran aground one mile to the west so as not to fall into enemy hands.

  Pushing their engines to the limit, the Vizcaya and the Cristabal Colon sailed parallel to the coast, pressed against it by a barrage of North American fire. They passed their destroyed companions, whose survivors were trying to swim to shore. Being faster, the Colon moved ahead, while the unfortunate Vizcaya suffered the full force of the enemy fire. Its commander, Commodore Eulate, made futile attempts to ram the battleship Brooklyn, but the Vizcaya was in flames and ran aground under the intense fire of the Iowa and the Oregon. It was then the turn of the Colon (Commodore Diaz Moreu). At one in the afternoon, pursued by four American ships, defenceless, as it had no heavy artillery, it was forced against the coast and was scuttled by its crew. Meanwhile, without hope of surviving, the light units of the squadron, the destroyers Pluton and Furor, left port one after the other. They were joined in the last few hours by the armed cutter Manigua, whose commander, Captain of the Merchant Navy Xaloc, refused to remain in port. His ship would have remained unharmed and been captured with the town, which was about to fall. Aware that escape was impossible, the Pluton and the Furor headed straight for the American battleships and cruisers. The Pluton (Lieutenant Vazquez) ran aground after it was split in two by a heavy shell from the Indiana, and the Furor was sunk by fire from the Indiana and the Gloucester. As for the fast, light Manigua, it left the Port of Santiago last, when the coast was littered with Spanish ships run aground and in flames. It hoisted a black flag alongside the Spanish flag and, under enemy fire, headed straight for the nearest American ship, the cruiser Indiana. The Manigua sailed for three miles in a zigzag towards the cruiser, under intense fire, and sank at twenty past one in the afternoon, its deck devastated and in flames from bow to stern, still attempting to ram the enemy. . .

  Quart put the cutting back in the folder and returned it to the trunk with the rest of the papers. Now he knew what Captain Xaloc was looking at in the picture: the cannons of the battleship Indiana. He pictured Xaloc on the bridge, surrounded by cannon fire and smoke, resolved to end his long journey to nowhere.

  "Did Carlota ever find out about this?" Quart asked.

  Macarena was leafing through an old photograph album. "I don't know," she said. "By July 1898 she had completely lost her mind, so we have no idea how she might have reacted to the news. Anyway, I think they kept it from her. She came up here to wait, until the day she died." She showed him a page of the album. There was an old photograph, with the stamp of the photographer's studio in a corner, of a young woman in light summer clothes, holding a parasol and wearing a wide-brimmed hat covered with flowers, a hat like those in the trunk. The photograph was very faded, but he could distinguish slender hands holding gloves and a fan, light-brown hair gathered in a bun, and a pale face with a sad smile and vacant eyes. She wasn't beautiful, but her face was pleasing: sweet, serene. She looked about twenty. "Maybe she had this taken for him," said Macarena.

  A stronger breeze moved the curtains, and through them Quart once again saw the belfry of Our Lady of the Tears. To dispel his uneasiness, he went over to one of the arched windows. He took off his jacket and stood contemplating the outline of the church in the darkness. He felt bereft, as Manuel Xaloc must have felt when he left the Casa del Postigo for the last time and went to the church to leave Carlota's pearls there. "I'm sorry," he murmured, not quite knowing why. He remembered the cold against his hand of the entrance to the crypt, the hiss of burning candles during Father Ferro's Mass, the odour of a barren past rising from the trunk.

  Macarena came and stood beside him, and she too looked out at the tower of Our Lady of the Tears. "Now you know all you need to know," she said.

  She was right. Quart knew more than enough, and Vespers had achieved his futile purpose. But none of it could be translated into the official prose of a report for the IEA. Monsignor Spada, and His Eminence Jerzy Iwaszkiewicz, and His Holiness the Pope were concerned only with the identity of the hacker and the likelihood of

  a scandal in a small Seville parish. The rest - the lives and stories contained within the walls of the church - was of no consequence. As Father Oscar had said, Our Lady of the Tears was too far from Rome. Like Captain Xaloc's doomed Manigua, it was just a small ship heading unsteadily towards the implacable steel mass of a destroyer.

  Macarena placed her hand on his arm. He didn't pull away, but she must have felt him tense. "I'm leaving Seville," he said.

  She said nothing for a moment, then turned to look at him. "Do you think they'll understand in Rome?" she asked.

  "I don't know. But whether they do or not isn't important." He gestured at the trunk, the bell-tower, the city in darkness below. "They haven't been here. The hacker drew their attention for a moment, but to them this is just a tiny point on a map. My report will be filed the minute it's been read."

  "It's not fair," said Macarena. "This is a special place."

  "You're wrong. The world is full of places like this. With a Carlota waiting at the window, a stubborn old priest, a dilapidated church . . . The Pope isn't going to lose sleep over Our Lady of the Tears. You people aren't important enough."

  "What about you?"

  "It doesn't matter. I don't sleep that much anyway."

  "I see." She moved her hand away. "You don't like to get involved, do you? You just have your orders." She pushed her hair back abrupdy and moved so that he had no choice but to look her in the face. "Aren't you going to ask me why I left my husband?"

  "No, I'm not. That's not necessary for my report."

  She laughed quietly, contemptuously. "Your report," she said. "You came here and asked questions. You can't leave without hearing all the answers. You've pried into everybody's lives, so here's the rest of mine." Her eyes were fixed on Quart. "I wanted to have a child, so there would be something between me and the abyss. I wanted a child, but Pencho didn't." Her voice became sarcastic. "You can imagine his objections - too soon, a bad time, a crucial period in our lives, we need to concentrate our efforts and energies, we can have one later ... I ignored him and became pregnant. Why do you look away, Father Quart? Are you shocked? Pretend this is confession. Part of your job."

  Quart shook his head, suddenly firm. His job was the one thing he was still clear about. "You're wrong again," he said gently. "It's not my job. I told you before that I didn't want to hear your confession."

  "You can't get out of this, Father." Her voice was harsh. "Think of me as a soul in torment that can't be turned away. Anyway, I'm not asking for absolution."

  He shrugged, as if that released him. But intent on the moon, she seemed not to notice. "I got pregnant," she went on, "and Pencho felt as if the bottom had fallen out of his world. He insisted it was too soon. He put pressure on me to get rid of the baby."

  So that was it. Things were falling into place.

  "So you did," Quart couldn't help saying.

  She smiled with a bitterness he'd never seen in her before. "Yes. I'm - Catholic, and I refused for as long as I could. But I loved my husband. Against Don Priamo's advice, I checked into a clinic and got rid of the baby. There were complications - a perforation of the uterus, haemorrhaging, and I had to have an emergency hysterectomy. Do you know what that means? Now I can never be a mother." Her face was towards the moon. "Never."

  "What did Father Ferro say?"

&n
bsp; "Nothing. He's old, he's seen too much. He still gives me communion when I ask." "Does your mother know?" "No."

  "And your husband?"

  Her laugh was dry, brief. "He doesn't either." She slid her hand along the windowsill, towards Quart's arm, but didn't touch it this time. "Only Father Ferro and Gris know. And now you." She hesitated a moment, as if to add another name.

  "Did Sister Marsala approve your decision to have an abortion?" asked Quart.

  "On the contrary. It nearly cost me her friendship. But when I had the complications at the clinic, she came to see me. I didn't let Pencho come with me, so he thought everything went smoothly. I went home to convalesce, and seemed fine to him."

  She turned to the priest. "There's a journalist," she said. "A man called Bonafé. The one who published some photographs last week ..."

  She paused, as if expecting him to say something, but Quart was silent. The photographs were the least of his worries, but he was concerned to hear Macarena mention Honorato Bonafé.

  "An unpleasant little man," she went on. "You wouldn't want to shake his. hand. It would probably be clammy."

  "I know who you mean," said Quart.

  Macarena looked at him with curiosity. She lowered her head and her face was hidden by her hair. "He came to see me this morning," she said. "Actually, he stopped me at the door. I would never have asked him into the house. I told him to go away, but before he left, he hinted at something about the clinic. He had been there asking questions."

  Dear God. Quart wished he'd been more forceful with Bonafé at their last meeting. He hoped he'd find the journalist in the hotel lobby again when he got back, so he could wipe the smile off his greasy face.

  "I'm worried," Macarena admitted.

  "It's no longer illegal to have an abortion in Spain," Quart said.

  "Yes. But that man and his magazine feed on scandal." She crossed her arms, suddenly cold. "Do you know how an abortion is done, Father Quart? No, I don't imagine you do. Not the details. The bright light, the white ceiling, a woman's legs wide open. You feel you want to die. And the endless, cold, terrifying loneliness . . ." She moved away from the window. "Damn all men, including you. Damn every last one of them."