But try as he might to sustain confidence in his sacred ministry, he could feel his spirit being increasingly overshadowed by the blackest suspicions. The closer he came to Lledonell, the more his mind was troubled… And chilling beads of cold sweat appeared on his brow when he espied the vague outline of the farm chimney against the dark backdrop of the sky. Then he thought that the turret on the building was coming into view, and next a shape which might have been an outside porch, and finally the bulk of the big farmhouse itself, with its yards, its sheds and its hayricks… But of people there was no sign at all… not a soul, not a single living person… Everything was shut up, locked and barred… Not a glimmer of light was coming from any window, nor from a doorway, nor from anywhere at all…
Father Llàtzer’s heart was beating frantically, pounding as though it were trying to burst out of his breast. Even the old man, shattered though he was and awkwardly slumped on the packsaddle, kept raising his head and showing his own great anxiety. Upon reaching the threshing floor in front of the house, the priest let go of the halter, and, as if suddenly taking his courage in both hands, he went determinedly to knock on the door:
Bang! Bang!
A good while went by: nothing… there was no answer. Again the priest knocked:
Bang! Bang!
The same silence as before.
Bang! Bang! Again he hammered on the door, this time more loudly.
Then it seemed that a sound was coming from inside there. Steps could be heard, making the floor creak as they came towards the entrance. Finally a window was opened and a man put out his head:
‘What do you want at this hour?’
‘We have had word to come and give comfort to an old lady who is close to dying…’
‘Where were you told it was?’
‘Lledonell…’
‘This is the place… but we don’t have anybody here who is in a bad way.’
On hearing this, the priest staggered backwards, as though on the point of dropping senseless to the ground… but then, folding his arms across his chest, as if to embrace the holy objects he carried there, he ran in despair towards the old man:
‘Josep, we have been deceived!’
Josep said not a word, but tears were streaming down his face…
‘If you want to come inside to take some rest…’ offered the man at the window, apparently feeling sorry for them.
‘No,’ was the priest’s immediate response as he took hold of the halter on the mare and turned again to make the journey back down into the depths of the ravine.
Stay there? Not a moment longer, not even long enough to say a brief prayer… What he wanted was to be away from there in a flash, to disappear for ever from the infernal place he was in… What mockery, what cruel mockery from those evil-minded enemies. He could forgive the taunts they aimed at him, and he did forgive them wholeheartedly… but… to deride so the Holy Sacrament! To mock the Body of Christ! What greater sacrilege than this?
With such thoughts in his mind, his spirit tortured by them, the priest fled quickly, as quickly as his legs would carry him, tugging at the mare. As the starlight began to fade, he realised that it would soon be dawn, and he felt afraid, mortally afraid, of being up on that accursed mountainside in the light of day. When he went past the houses on the ridge, the people there would probably rush out to look at him, to scoff and to insult him. And the mere thought of this brought a burning discomfort to his cheeks, a scorching, excruciating blaze of embarrassment.
The vexation he felt was not on account of himself, a poor hapless priest, but of the Holy Sacrament that he was carrying on his person. That was why he was now rushing desperately back downhill, because he thought that to expose the Body of Christ to the taunts of those godless peasants was like exposing the Saviour, once more, to the affronts of the scourges and the thorns, the mockery of the purple robe and the sceptre of cane, the shame of death on the cross, the sponge soaked in sour wine and gall…
How insufferably heartbreaking it all was! As the route took them past the hamlet on the ridge, even though the priest was rushing as though driven by a storm wind, he thought he could hear doors and windows being opened and also muttered sounds everywhere of scoffing and mocking. But the most distressing thing was shortly after this, as he was about to cross the yard in front of Puiggraciós sanctuary… That was where the Footloose woman would perhaps be, together with the innkeeper and his wife, the shepherds, the charcoal burners and the wood cutters, all the people who had contrived the whole hellish deception…
In order to be safe from vicious looks and sacrilegious insults, the priest guided the mare slightly away from the main track, so that they could go by below the level of the yard without being seen, concealed by the banking. But, as soon as they went into the first pine trees of the downwards slope, Father Llàtzer heard a shriek of diabolical laughter that sent a devastating shiver through his whole being.
Hee, hee-hee! Hee, hee-hee! It was the same infernal laughter that he used to hear coming from the sanctuary during the long sleepless nights after his crisis… the same shrill cackling which had resounded in the church that Sunday when he had pronounced the excommunication…
At this the priest abruptly quickened his pace, rushing down the hillside, driven by the urgent desire to deliver the Body of Christ into safety from the insults and the abuse proffered by those irredeemably damned inhabitants of the tree-clad ravines.
Wild boar hunters.
(Courtesy of Paquita Dosrius)
Sheep gathering, Gallicant, c. 1910.
(Courtesy of the Municipal Archive, Figueró-Montmany)
XIX
Death Throes
‘Josep, come quickly, up here!’ screeched Mariagna from the landing outside the priest’s bedroom.
‘Josep, come here, for the love of God!’
But, as neither hide nor hair of the old man appeared, his good wife could only make her way to the window looking onto the cemetery and from there start wailing again into thin air:
‘Josep, for God’s sake! Be quick, come here!’
She was looking out in great agitation, now in the direction of the vegetable patch, now towards the main path, now towards the line of cypresses. But her eyesight was failing badly and for the life of her Mariagna could nowhere see her husband. And so, growing more and more impatient, all she could do was to keep calling out in her cracked, thin voice:
‘Josep, come! Do be quick, Josep!’
And the sad thing was that the old man was really quite close at hand. At that very time he was just coming under the cypress trees, heading towards the house. But he was so hard of hearing that he heard none of his wife’s cries. And what is more, the poor old fellow had barely enough strength to put one foot in front of the other because of that painful limp of his. Ever since he went crashing down into the stream bed, the night they were going to give the last rites to the dying woman at Lledonell, he had not been himself. Now he moped around the whole day long, and every step he took was accompanied by his groaning complaint, as if he were muttering a roll call of all the saints: ‘Lord, be by my side! God help me! Lord, have pity on me!’
That is why he did not hear a word of poor old Mariagna’s pathetic calls as she was screaming herself hoarse from up at the window, until finally, exhausted and whimpering, she went downstairs intending to go outside to see if she could find her husband. The little old woman’s movements reflected her anxiety and her desperation… as if driven by imminent calamity, she looked capable of forcing herself to cover as much ground as might be necessary… And then, as she reached the doorway, without having seen him, she bumped into Josep, who had come limping along in the opposite direction.
‘Oh dear, Josep, come quickly, don’t tarry so!’
‘But… what is wrong? Bless me!’
‘His reverence is in a bad state… He is on his way out!’
‘Dying, do you mean? God help us!’
‘Yes, dying… if he isn’t dead a
lready. I called him… and he did not respond; I called him again… and he still did not say a word; I touched his hand… and it felt as cold as ice…’
And with tears in their eyes and fear in their souls, the old couple went back inside, all aquiver. It was not the image of death which scared them, for they were well used to seeing it from close up, as well often having to feel it with their own hands… They knew only too well, from their duties as rural sextons, what it meant to keep watch over a corpse, to dress it for burial and to consign it to the grave… What terrified them was the thought of the horrific solitude that awaited them among those dark hillsides as soon as his reverence’s eyes were closed for ever. Holding hands just like children, the two of them went together up the stairs, eager to be at Father Llàtzer’s bedside, and nervous at the thought of the great mystery in which they were involved, the great mystery of a poor human soul departing for the next world…
The room was cold, bleak, bare. With the headboard pushed up against a wall, the bed stood a couple of feet above floor level, beneath the outstretched arms of a large crucifix. At the other side of the room were two big chairs and a small table with an oil lamp on it, and above this furniture, there was a shelf full of books and papers. There was nothing else to see except the whitewashed walls, with discoloured patches here and there caused by leaks in the past, stains which snaked down the wall from ceiling height.
The old couple went in with cautious steps, almost tiptoeing as though fearful of disturbing the sacred silence of a life which was now drawing to a close. No sound was to be heard, neither sighing, nor hoarse breathing nor panting… Filled with the respect that closeness to the mystery of death inspires, they moved slowly towards the bed, and in the flickering light of the lamp, they now peered to see if the moribund body there was still breathing at all.
‘Father!’ shouted the old man, his voice choking. ‘Father!’
But the priest neither moved nor made any sound, lying there like a stone effigy.
Then the old man took hold of the hand that was resting on the bedcover, and when he moved it to his lips in order to kiss it he felt the frosty chill. As well as cold, moreover, it felt heavy, so heavy that, when he let it fall back on to the bed, it dropped there like a stone. Poor Josep felt his own spirits failing, but as though determined not to lose the last glimmer of hope, he wanted to make sure of the evidence before admitting the terrible certainty of the calamity that now befell them. In order to dispel their distressing doubt, to know for certain whether their master was dead or alive, he would have felt his chest, checked his heart and breathing, if the dying man had been a man like all the rest. But as if bound by a holy respect, he dared not place a hand on God’s minister, on the one anointed in Christ. He went no further than to take the lamp and swing it gently in front of the priest’s eyes, to see whether his pupils showed any response and followed the light. But there was only a glazed and fixed look.
At this the old man’s head drooped, as if to say, ‘There is nothing to be done,’ and turning to his wife, he spoke to her in a solemn tone:
‘Mariagna, his reverence is dead. Let us both kneel and pray for his soul.’
And, as the old couple fell to their knees at the bedside, each muttering the Lord’s Prayer, the priest made a great effort to speak; but try as he might, he could say nothing… The truth was that Father Llàtzer was not dead, not yet… He could hear clearly what they were saying, he could make sense of everything going on around him… but he could neither turn over nor make any movement, and to speak or to give any sign of life was impossible for him. If only he had been able to shout out loud, he would have said to them: ‘What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Stop your drivelling, you hapless things!’ But since he was incapable of opening his mouth, he could not call their attention… and when the thought occurred that they might bury him before he was dead, he felt gripped inside by the blackest dread. ‘This is the punishment for my shortcomings!’ he thought in horror, while the couple were praying on their knees at his bedside. ‘It is the punishment for my sins, to be buried alive! I was full of life when I was consigned to the black grave of these ravines… And I shall be alive, alive when they lay me to rest in the church graveyard. It is a sentence that has always hung over me, to be treated for ever and a day like a dead person! What an awful damnation for someone like me who has always sought the sunlight, who has always been a lover of life! I got caught up in a consuming fancy to bring back to life a thinker of centuries long past, poking into and digging about in the grave which were his books, declaring that all the world’s truth was to be found there, and I tried to make a saint out of a heretic. And becoming more and more arrogant in this mission, I pursued it relentlessly until I fell into the pit of sin, the death of the soul… Then came my punishment, to be exiled to these ravines shrouded in shadows and steeped in sadness… and even here, even in this land of unconsciousness and of death, I attempted to bring forth the gush of dynamic action and of life. I wanted to resuscitate the lifeless woodlanders who stalk the dark tree-clad slopes with the appearance of having a life and a soul. But instead of my inspiring them with the life force, it is they who have given the kiss of death to me… In the effort to open their eyes to the eternal light, I have submitted to mockery, to being deceived, to being spat upon, to being physically and spiritually martyred… and now, as my reward for all this, they will be helping to bury me while I am still alive and breathing, and they will even come to dance upon my grave…’
While these awful apprehensions were drifting like ghastly shadows in and out of Father Llàtzer’s consciousness, the old couple, having finished their funerary prayers, stood upright making the sign of the cross upon their brows, on their eyes and on their mouths. And then the old man said to his wife, very deliberately, in that low voice which people use in the presence of a dead body:
‘Mariagna, stay here, close by, to watch over his body… and light at each corner of the bed those four snuffed candles there on the shelf…’
‘And you, Josep, where are you going?’ she asked very respectfully.
‘Me, I am going to the church… to ring the death knell for his reverence.’
‘May God keep him in holy glory!’
‘Amen,’ replied the old man, adding later with a note of mysterious unction: ‘Then, when I come back here… we’ll prepare to put him in his shroud.’
As Josep was limping out of the room, horrified thoughts ran through the priest’s mind: ‘Woe is me! If only I could say something! If only I were able to give a sign, to get through to them! How to stop them from making the bells ring out, sounding the death knell? When the peasants hear it, perhaps they will come down here, to come in and see me, perhaps then to put me in the ground while I still live and breathe, hastening to throw earth on top of me in order to finish once and for all their evil work!’
These thoughts were quickly followed by a procession of disturbing spectres as into his mind there came the tribulations and the insults with which his sullen parishioners had tormented him ever since the ravines had become his last resting place… He saw how old and young had turned their backs on him, hostile and shifty, when he was preaching to them on the holy labour of refurbishing the church which lay in ruins… he saw how they had all scoffed at the fervour with which on his own he rebuilt God’s house, stone by stone… how, when the church was repaired, they took that divinely inspired miracle to be the malign work of the Devil… then he saw how stupefied they were when, standing before the altar dressed in the sacred vestments, he made them fall to their knees as he stared them in the face like a God who had been offended.
But this succession of traumatic visions faded momentarily when old Mariagna approached his bed dragging with her a battered lampstand, one of a set that were stored up in the loft space. The poor woman stood it to the right of the bedhead, and then went straight away to fetch another, which she placed opposite. Then she positioned the remaining two by the foot of the bed,
one on each side.
She was extremely patient and meticulous in ensuring that the lampstands were placed at an equal distance one from another, carefully checking all the alignments, as if she were furnishing an altar for a great ceremony. It was as though she wanted to invest the spectacle of death with all the solemnity that she could bring to it in her peasant destitution. With the same display of liturgical ritualism that she had applied to the methodical placing of the lampstands, she went round to put each candle in position, lighting them one by one, with a total air of self-communion and solemn prayer, genuflecting and crossing herself each time she came close to the bed, just as if she were performing a hitherto unknown office, one that she was making up as she went along, dedicated to the eternal repose of departing souls.
Next she began to arrange the bedside table, to trim the wick of the lamp, to dust down chairs just like any lady of the house when they are expecting important visitors to call. She, poor thing, was that day awaiting a visit from the highest majesty on earth, a visit from my Lady Death, and she was doing everything she could to welcome her, if not with the correct ceremonial, at least with all the propriety she could bring to the occasion. That is why she was tidying everything, removing fluff and arranging bits of furniture… because what she did not want was to display insufficient reverence or a lack of respect for that mysterious sovereign figure who holds all men in its thrall.
‘Death, oh holy Death, when my hour of final agony comes, be kind and gentle with me!’ the old woman was muttering, as though praying, while she was arranging the books on the shelf and removing the dust from bundles of papers there, and contemplating what an impressive effect was made by the large candles at each corner of the bed.
XX
Absolution
What a deep shudder was struck in the mind and spirit of the priest by those funereal preparations, as he lay there like a tree trunk, stiff and cold, horrified by his awareness of the burning candle at each corner of his bed! The open grave seemed to be gaping in front of him, ready to receive that body of his in which a soul still flickered… It would not be long before his parishioners arrived to complete their gravediggers’ work… not long before the executioners came…
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