by Maria Duenas
“From Santa Barbara. From the mission.”
I tore open the envelope and unfolded the letter. A few lines written with a shaky hand and in old-fashioned calligraphy:
May 15th, 1969, year of the Lord
My dear Professor,
After your last week’s visit to our mission’s archive, on replacing the records on their corresponding shelves, this fragment of a letter was left sticking out which I presume went unnoticed by you, and, unable to catalog it for lack of sufficient information, I am sending it to you as a mere curiosity and proof of my personal gratitude for your great interest in the history of our beloved missions.
I look forward to your next visit, and in the meantime I wish you my sincerest best wishes for the Lord’s everlasting peace. Kindly extend them as well to the pleasant and extremely friendly Spanish woman who accompanied you to our last meeting.
A series of pictures came to my mind with powerful luminosity. An elderly archivist whose days went by immersed in files and dusty papers and whom most likely no one had consulted about anything in ages. Successive visits by a curious professor with whom he shared a common language. The pretty woman who unexpectedly appeared by his side at their last meeting, the Spaniard with her familiar accent and the quick laugh whose image remained engraved in the soul of the old archivist, who was accustomed to silence and solitude.
The letter was dated two days before their deaths. They never learned of its contents.
“Read this,” I whispered to Daniel when he came back inside, ready to continue packing up.
I did not show him the Franciscan’s missive with the mention of Fontana and Aurora: Why remind him of that painful story? But I did hand him the unfolded half piece of paper that the priest had sent Fontana from the Santa Barbara mission archive. Without a letterhead or addressee. Without a header or date, with half of its essence unrecoverable.
“Altimira saying good-bye to us. He shows up at a fine time, the son of a bitch,” he said ironically.
It was the first time we’d seen his handwriting and signature on what seemed half of a letter that he perhaps never sent.
. . . and then our modest construction was the victim of the most violent action by the obstinate Indians in their heathen errors, who equipped with clubs and bow and arrows, readied to put their depraved design into practice. “Love God, children,” I told them, but the heathen failed to understand such a greeting in their urge to attack. “Long live the faith of Jesus Christ and death to its enemies,” I insisted, and still they didn’t heed my call, which resulted in the death of seven converts, all of whom were buried among pine trees in the consecrated land of our humble mission, beneath simple slabs engraved with a Lord’s cross, their Christian initials, and the year of their fatality, 1827.
And I thus bid you God speed until the next occasion, and may the Almighty keep you in His love and grace for many years to come. With my best wishes, your servant who commends himself to Your Reverence from the bottom of his heart.
Friar Jose Altimira
A modest construction, seven converts buried among some pine trees beneath simple stones with the Lord’s cross, year 1827, in the consecrated land of our humble mission.
“Our humble mission . . . We were so close, so close . . .” I whispered, biting my tongue.
He placed a hand on my shoulder and pressed it. A useless gesture of consolation.
“It’s no use being sorry. Come on, let’s finish packing up. We’ve got to make this room decent again.”
Just then, his cell phone rang.
“What’s up, Joe?” he said as he let go of me. Same words as last time, and the same reaction.
With Altimira’s half letter in my hand and that of the archivist in my back pocket, I headed to the kitchen in search of Rebecca. That would be our last dinner, the last day I’d sit at her table, the last night I’d enjoy her warmth and affection.
“Can I help you?” I asked her, thinking that maybe by stirring the sauce for the pasta that was simmering on the stove I’d also be able to calm my uneasiness.
“Blanca!” I heard Daniel scream the minute I’d grabbed the spatula. “Blanca!” he repeated.
He burst into the kitchen, bounding over to me with a marathon runner’s strides. Then he grabbed my arms forcefully and fixed his gaze on me, almost shaking me.
“On digging in Los Pinitos to make a . . . a . . . What the hell is the name for the hole you make in the ground for excrement?”
It was the first time I heard him hesitate in my language, the first time the breadth of his Spanish vocabulary turned on him.
“Latrine.”
“Latrine, that’s it! On digging a hole for the latrines the campers have come upon what seems like a small cemetery among the pine trees. So far they’ve found what appear to be three graves, but there could be more. Very simple, hardly covered by some flat stones with rudimentary inscriptions.”
A cold shiver ran down my back.
“Each stone has a set of initials,” he said.
“And a cross?”
He nodded.
“And a year?”
He smiled under his beard, as he had done on the days when there was sun between us.
“Also.”
“1827?”
The spatula fell out of my hands and crashed to the floor with a clatter, splattering the tiles and our feet.
Chapter 43
* * *
We’d hardly slept; we both still had traces of water from the shower in our hair and a folder with documents in the backseat.
Classes and exams were over; students were waiting for grades or packing for the Christmas holiday, many had already gone home. The more combative, however, remained at Los Pinitos, camping by the humble graves of the seven converts in that territory that we no longer doubted had housed a mission, the last Franciscan mission of the fabled Camino Real. The one never cataloged, the twenty-second: the most fragile and ephemeral, which Andres Fontana chose to name Mission Olvido.
On passing by Rebecca’s open office door, we gave her a silent greeting. She knew we were on our way elsewhere and that we didn’t have a minute to spare.
Luis Zarate had been given a heads-up; I’d called the previous evening.
“We’ve got solid proof to bring forward against the Los Pinitos project,” I informed him. “Everything must be tied up by tomorrow morning. My plane leaves at six in the evening, and I have to leave Santa Cecilia at two.”
He summoned us at nine. We were there five minutes early.
I’d hardly had half an hour to swing by my apartment to change clothes and, while I was at it, start packing up in a hurry. Emptying out shelves and drawers with both hands, stuffing everything into suitcases without allowing myself to stop and think what I was about to leave behind.
“We want you to help us, Luis,” I said when we were seated before him.
“What kind of help are we talking about, exactly?” he replied from behind his desk, which was ordered as usual with the precision of a military parade.
I did not perceive any ill will in his terseness, nor sympathy. Daniel, seated to my right, with his legs and arms crossed, listened without interrupting. I knew there was no danger from him; the beast had finally subsided. Throughout the small hours of the morning, while we struggled before my computer screen with four hands and two brains full of caffeine to write a coherent report summarizing our investigation, I was able to get his yes. Yes to letting Zarate in on it. Yes that the remaining legacy coming from Darla’s garage be integrated seamlessly with the rest in the department’s custody. Yes to a few more things.
“My proposal is that you join us,” I then said. “That you do so as the chairman of this department, which, one way or another, in the past or in the present, we all have some sort of bond with. That you forget about SAPAM and its irregularities, t
hat you accept Daniel Carter’s part of the legacy as a donation, and that your name appears in the appeal. That you be the official spokesperson of our findings.”
He looked at me with doubt written on his face, not quite believing it. And then I resumed. All at once.
“I’m asking you that you accept, in Andres Fontana’s name. What we’ve done during the past days, even what I’ve done for more than three months, is an insignificant task compared to the colossal job he did. Our work has consisted of tying up a few loose ends, but the one who struggled for years to unearth this mission was Fontana. Perhaps at first he did so purely for personal reasons, sensing in the old missions a trace of his country’s soul and his very own essence. But, above all, he did so as an academic, as a humanist committed to research and the spread of knowledge, in this department, this university, and this city. When death carried him away, he held the position you hold now, Luis. And like yourself he watched over this house and its people, for academic excellence and the common good.”
I then pointed to Daniel, who, leaning back in his chair, listened attentively.
“He might be Fontana’s intellectual and sentimental heir, given everything that bound them for years.” Then I turned my eyes back to the serious-looking department chairman. “But don’t forget that Fontana’s institutional heir is the one seated today in the chair he filled. That institutional heir, Luis Zarate, is you. Both of you have the moral duty to respect each other and fight for the dignity of the man whose legacy you are stewards of in equal measure.”
Silence fell over the office. From the hallway and through a wall the hysterical muffled scream of a student slipped through, perhaps an irrepressible explosion of happiness at a higher-than-expected grade. Meanwhile, all three of us remained quiet.
Finally Daniel sat up and broke the silence.
“I think Blanca is absolutely right. She offers us a reasonable solution. My initial intention was to hand over the results to the platform against the Los Pinitos project and for them to decide how best to use the documentation. But she’s convinced me that Fontana’s voice should somehow stand on its own. And the most fitting way is through the institution he worked for.” He cleared his throat before continuing. “And as far as I’m concerned, I’m sorry about my behavior. I realize my mistake and I apologize to you, Luis, for having invaded your space in pursuit of my own interests.”
I wasn’t too sure whether to cheer, raise a victorious fist into the air, or hug him with all my might. My plea to vindicate Fontana had convinced him to place his teacher and friend’s memory above his own pride, but I never imagined that he’d express his apology in such words. With sober humility, without a fuss. He didn’t stand to extend a heartfelt hand to the chairman, nor did he intone a mea culpa, but he spoke to him candidly, called him by name, and it sounded genuine.
Luis, from the other side of the desk, did not reply.
“Can we count on you, then? Here is the conclusive evidence and a written report,” I said, showing him the folder in which we’d placed our findings. “We can take a look at it right now.”
The department chairman finally spoke, his words loaded with ambiguity.
“Sometimes we are blinded by arrogance and are not conscious of how elementary things are. Until someone sets before our eyes the simple naked truth.”
I had difficulty figuring out if that was an acknowledgment of Daniel’s apology or a reciprocal apology for his own behavior. But there was no time for guessing games. Time ticked away; we could not wait.
“Then, are you willing?” I insisted.
Just as she’d done a few days earlier when she came in loaded with pizzas, Fanny again cut me off in midsentence. This time without even knocking, she poked her impetuous head through the doorway and, like an ax blow, interrupted me.
“Professor Super is looking for you. He says it’s urgent.”
Daniel automatically felt the pockets of his jacket and trousers. Afterwards he uttered “shit”—his spontaneous reaction on realizing that he’d left his cell phone someplace on that frantic morning after a practically sleepless night.
Next, Fanny opened the door to let the veteran professor through.
On that day Joe Super’s eyes didn’t show the usual bonhomie and sense of humor with which he always participated in my classes. There was no trace of the charm with which he came up to our table to greet us on the night we ran into him at Los Olivos. On that morning his eyes conveyed only worry.
“The police have come to Los Pinitos. They intend to evict the campers. Before the discovery of the graves, the judge ordered an evacuation, but the kids are unwilling to budge and things are getting tenser by the minute. If you’re going to tell them anything, it’s best you do so as soon as possible.”
We immediately stood up and turned to Luis Zarate doubtfully, silently, waiting for his reaction. If he agreed to come with us it would be an act of blind faith, since we still hadn’t been able to fill him in regarding our conclusions. Perhaps that was why he took a moment to react. Until finally, in silent affirmation, he too rose.
While Daniel drove, jolting us on the curves and running a few red lights, we explained rather hastily the particulars of our findings. Both Luis and Joe knew from the previous evening that we had conclusive evidence, but neither knew the details. The long early-morning work had allowed us to incorporate structure and coherence into our research, so we finally had a consistent account of the facts.
We reached at Los Pinitos almost at the same time that two more police cars arrived ready to join several others with their sirens and lights on. Nearby were a couple of imposing excavators standing idle as well as a large number of private cars. An enormous billboard full of advertising faces, empty smiles, and phrases whose message was beginning to wear thin had been set up there, promising exciting shopping and unlimited entertainment.
We had to walk a considerable distance until we reached the campers. There were more than a dozen multicolored tents, innumerable signs, and fifty or sixty students in sight, along with some onlookers and a professor or two. They all wore over their clothes the orange protest T-shirts that had begun to appear on campus since the demonstration.
Around them were crowds of people: less confrontational members of the platform, sympathizers and onlookers of all colors and shapes, many taking pictures. Some local television crews were among them, and at a camping table, behind a couple of large thermoses, the warrior grandmothers distributed plastic cups brimming with coffee. Others chatted away or simply watched the scene expectantly, not knowing what was going to happen.
The police had cordoned off the perimeter of what we already knew had been the mission’s tiny cemetery. It was only a small rectangular area amid the pine trees, sixteen feet long, not more than six feet wide. The first thing that Daniel and I did, instinctively, was to head in that direction.
“Hey, you can’t go through!” a policeman yelled from a distance. Daniel had just stooped to cross under the tape that restricted access. In black letters on a yellow background could clearly be read DO NOT CROSS.
As if he were deaf and could not read, he offered me his hand. “Come on!” he ordered.
“You were here, Father Altimira,” he said in a low voice when we came to the first grave, covered by a dirty gray stone barely one foot square, rough and irregular.
At our back we could hear Joe Super negotiating with the policeman who wanted to force us out of there.
We crouched to read the poorly marked initials, E. F., most likely scratched with no tool other than a rudimentary awl. On top of them, a humble cross, and beneath it, the year 1827. The year between the burning of San Francisco de Solano Mission in Sonoma and the return to Spain of that rebel father whose virtues did not include submission.
“What a pity Fontana never came upon them,” I sighed.
“It would have been difficult: time had cov
ered them well. Look,” Daniel said, grabbing a handful of soil that had been removed when the graves were unearthed.
“What he might have found around here, though, is this,” I added, taking out of my raincoat pocket the rough wooden cross we had found among the jumble of papers in one of Darla Stern’s boxes.
Daniel took it out of my hands.
“It has been a good traveling companion,” he admitted while contemplating it. He then looked me in the eye and caressed my cheek with two fingers. “And so have you.”
“Get out of there once and for all, please!” the policeman roared.
We had no choice but to obey.
A few other members of the protest had joined Joe Super and Luis Zarate. They were all privy to the news of our findings when Joe, after Daniel’s call, had shared it with them the previous evening.
“The moment to make it public has come,” Daniel said.
He looked at me, raising an eyebrow. I understood him and immediately answered.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
The categorical no came from me. The first yes came out of Daniel’s mouth; the second, from Luis’s. Both serious, convinced. I swallowed my feelings.
“On the condition that I speak in Spanish,” I acquiesced after a few disconcerting seconds. “If I were to do it in English, I don’t think I’d be able to convey the spirit of this story. I need a translator.”
They both looked at each other.
“Go ahead, Mr. Chairman,” Daniel then said. “If from now on you’re going to be Fontana’s spokesperson, this is a good time to get started.”
The news that someone was going to make a statement quickly spread, and everyone began to crowd around us. The young Rastafarian I’d seen so many times took his drum out of a tent and struck up a good rhythm, inviting those present to be quiet.
When silence was established I began, with the voice of reason and the voice of the heart. For myself, and for those who had accompanied me on this adventure, and especially for those who’d been left behind.