by Luz Gabás
“What about Colau?” Esteban asked.
“He wanted to take some pictures of the confessional,” said Neli. “And we don’t need to wait; he came in his own car.”
They had just begun walking when Brianda said, “I’ll be right back.”
Intrigued by her uncle’s interest in the old confessional, she crept stealthily into the church. What she saw paralyzed her. Colau had moved the confessional away from the wall and was squatting behind it. He was too absorbed in examining the wood to notice her presence. From time to time, he repeated some words that echoed off the stones and reached her with complete clarity: “Why have you come? What are you looking for exactly?”
A moment later, he let out a gasp of surprise.
“The boxwood and the gorse,” he exclaimed, caressing the carving with trembling fingers. “How did you know? It can’t be. Have you been going through my things again?”
Brianda fled the incomprehensible scene. Her shaking knees slowed her down and made her trip over stones. At the top of the bridge, she stopped and knelt on the freezing ground, refusing to look back. She closed her eyes and began to sob. Her visions had turned out to be true. And what was Colau talking about? She didn’t understand anything.
A hand rested on her arm.
“Let’s go, Brianda,” Neli said gently.
Feeling as if she had no strength left to control her body, Brianda accepted Neli’s help getting to her feet.
“You know why I came here, Neli, don’t you?” she groaned. “I started having anxiety attacks and my mother thought I’d get better in the country, but it isn’t working; I just feel weaker and weaker. And everything here is so strange! And my uncle isn’t right in the head! And you’re a—” She stopped. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’ve been watching you closely, Brianda. I need more proof, but I think I have a fair idea what’s happening to you.”
“Can you help me?”
“I’m scared too, and I’m worried you’ll think I’m crazy if I tell you too much. But I’m sure of one thing: if my suspicions are correct, you will have to endure great suffering before this is over. Are you willing to suffer in order to regain peace?”
Brianda took a step back and stared at her. She’d do anything to feel like herself again, but she didn’t understand what someone like Neli could do for her.
Just then, she realized that Colau was beginning to climb the stony slope of the bridge.
“I’ll think about it,” she said, and made her way back to the car.
11.
Brianda barely said a word for the rest of the day. The headache she’d had since returning from the monastery forced her to keep her eyes half-closed and her head down. She’d thought that at least it would allow her to avoid Colau’s sinister look, but there he was now, sitting across from her, waiting for Isolina to serve dinner. His mere presence was increasingly unbearable, and it irritated her that neither her aunt nor Esteban seemed to notice how he scrutinized her every movement. While it was terribly unsettling that one of her visions had turned out to be true, it was even more upsetting that, as he examined the confessional, Colau had spoken aloud as if talking to her, had accused her of snooping in his office, even though she hadn’t set foot in there. She couldn’t imagine what secret related to the carvings he could possibly be hiding, and there was no way she was going to ask. And then there was Neli and her bizarre belief that she could help Brianda get well.
The house phone rang, and Isolina answered it. By the rhythm of the conversation, Brianda knew immediately that it was her mother. After a few minutes, Isolina brought the phone to Brianda, who went to the hall for privacy. She really wasn’t in the mood to talk to Laura. She would have no choice but to tell her the truth: that she wasn’t feeling better and now, on top of it, she had lost her job.
“How are you?” asked her mother cheerfully.
“Fine.”
“Isolina told me that Esteban is there to see you. I suppose you’ll come back with him in the next couple of days. I guess it’s back to work; your vacation is over!”
“Not exactly. Look. There is something I should tell you.” She took a deep breath. “I got laid off. Cutbacks.”
Laura was quiet a moment, then said, “Even more reason to return. You’ll have to get your unemployment papers in order and start looking for another job immediately so you don’t miss the boat.”
“Boat? What boat?” Brianda muttered under her breath.
She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples while her mother kept on talking. She had no clue what to do with her life. At the moment, she didn’t feel capable of getting on any boat or restarting a life that felt distant in a place like Madrid, which had also begun to seem very far away. Madrid meant Esteban, but how was she supposed to sleep every night with a man her body rejected? She could probably stay in Tiles for a while, but between Colau’s attitude and Neli’s mysteries, it hardly seemed like the place where she’d find peace and quiet. She had always thought of herself as sensible; she had always done what people considered the right thing, but now she was disoriented.
At the first opportunity, she passed the phone back to her aunt. When Isolina hung up, she said in a very low voice, “We heard you. I didn’t know, love, I’m sorry. You know you can stay here as long as you want.”
Brianda gave her a grateful hug. She poured herself a glass of water and took some ibuprofen.
“Do you mind if I go to bed early, Esteban?”
“Not at all,” he responded. “I’ll stay here and read for a bit. I have a couple of cases to prepare for Monday, and it’s already Friday.”
Brianda climbed up the creaking stairs to her room.
Her last thought before sleep overtook her was that she would be sad to leave that place without seeing Lubich. It was obvious she hadn’t mastered her fear. She still hadn’t dared cross that line in the forest into the unknown.
When she woke up the following morning, Esteban was working at the desk near the balcony. The sunlight beaming into the room was so intense she could barely open her eyes.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.” Esteban came over, sat on the bed, and leaned over to kiss her. “It’s already eleven, and it’s an incredibly beautiful day. Are you feeling better?”
Brianda nodded.
She got up, took a quick shower, and put on a pair of jeans, a warm blouse, and a white sweater topped off with a colorful scarf. She was in a surprisingly good mood. Sleeping in had done her good.
“Would you like to go for a walk?” she asked.
Esteban pointed to the papers. “I’m pressed for time. I’m sure Isolina will go with you.”
Brianda went down to the kitchen, had some coffee with milk, and went out looking for Isolina, who she spotted at the back of the house cleaning the remains of dead flowers and plants from some anemic beds. She watched her for a moment and wondered why she’d work so hard at something that even in twenty lifetimes would never look like a real garden. But there Isolina was, year after year, continuing her challenge. Brianda was about to call out, but she remembered her thought from the previous night and stopped. It was time.
She walked around to the front and resolutely took the path toward the fountain. As if he had been waiting for her, Luzer got up and began to follow. Under a shriveled ash tree, Brianda found a thick stick in case she had to get rid of him. If there was anyone or anything she would not miss when she left Tiles, it was that animal and his owner. With the beast at her heels, she walked to the path toward Lubich, just before the graveyard, and stopped. Her heart began to pound.
She thought of all the times she had taken this path of lush undergrowth just to where the climbing plants overtook the landscape, and decided to try one more time. It might be a long time before she got another chance. She wondered if she could finally make herself cross the woods to Lubich.
Everything was in her favor. It was a beautiful, sunny day without a cloud in the sky. Luzer, although still lo
oking at her suspiciously, made a good guard dog, alert to everything, his bark frightening off every other animal.
The walk warmed her up, so she took off her sweater and tied it around her waist. Luzer left the path to sniff among the trees, but came back rapidly, as if realizing he should not leave her alone. But Brianda was surprised by the peace she felt for the first time in months. She was calm, serene, and even happy. She thought it must be the result of her overcoming a specific fear: on her own, she had managed to enter the unsettlingly dense forest from which she had fled so many times before, trailed by an animal more wolf than dog. And nothing had happened. There were no monsters, no ghosts, just a riotous display of nature on a living canvas of green, yellow, ochre, gray, and blue.
At last, she, the path, and the woods came to a halt before a stone wall whose only opening was a forged iron gate about ten feet high. Calm gave way to wonder. This was the forbidden place, the gloomy castle where the valley’s children could vanish. She wondered where the dangerous precipice was—if it even existed.
The open gate tempted Brianda to enter that corner where time had stood still for centuries. She took several steps, and Luzer began to growl as ferociously as he had that night with Neli, but this time he kept his distance. The hair on the back of Brianda’s neck stood on end. She had the absurd impression that Luzer wanted to stop her—not because of any imminent danger but out of frustration, as he himself didn’t dare to enter. But having come so far, she had no intention of stopping now.
With her heart thumping, Brianda crept along the graveled path that curled slowly toward a terrace with some building materials stacked up beside a centuries-old stone mansion. The imposing sight of the somber building of unpolished masonry made her forget Luzer’s now-distant growls.
Loud noises and voices led her to a colossal stone gate; from its hinges hung a gigantic wooden door, decorated with iron rivets as big as eggs on top of diamond-shaped metal strips. She peeked past the gate to an interior patio. She tilted her head back to appreciate the elaborate wooden latticework that covered the entrance passage, and felt dizzy, both from the movement itself and from the magnificence of the work. Then she entered the patio, which was as big as the main square of many small villages, and she was awestruck. A tall tower was a solemn junction between the first building she had passed through and a more elegant one covered in ivy. This second building was probably the main residence, and it had windows framed with stone blocks, some with carved wooden ledges, and a pair of beautiful windows with three arches each. The other attached buildings were simpler—she thought they must have been the old stables and hay barns—but the eaves with their corbels, carved and decorated with spirals and wreathed motifs, conferred a unity to the whole site.
Lubich was magnificent and sumptuous, but there was something in that stone-filled world that made her shudder. She understood better why Corso was so occupied with the house, but couldn’t imagine why a single man had decided to undertake a project of such enormous proportions in this out-of-the-way spot.
In the farthest part of the patio, where there was still scaffolding up, a group of workers continued their tasks, oblivious to her presence. Brianda recognized Bernardo, Petra’s husband, and wondered whether to go over to him.
“What a surprise!” exclaimed Jonas. His smile made the small wrinkles around his eyes stand out. “What are you doing here?”
“I was out for a walk and got curious. I hope that the owner won’t mind me just dropping by.” She hoped Jonas couldn’t tell that she was fishing to find out if Corso was there.
Just then, a dump truck roared up at great speed despite being loaded with rubble.
“Nah, I don’t think he’ll mind,” said Jonas. “There he is.”
The vehicle stopped and Corso, bare-chested, jumped down. He quickly untied a shirt from around his waist and pulled it on. He instinctively smoothed down his rebellious hair and brushed his pants, clearly trying to look respectable for the unexpected visitor.
Brianda froze. In a few seconds, she would have to greet him. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to utter a word.
She looked up, and her eyes met Corso’s. The mansion, the patio, the tower all faded into the background. If it weren’t for the clarity of his imposing figure, shirt loose over his jeans, his unruly dark hair, his deep eyes, she would have thought she was going to faint. She noticed her racing pulse, the tightness in her chest, the strain in her neck. She had to say something, but no words came. How well did they know each other? Did thinking and dreaming about him count?
Corso leaned down to kiss her politely on the cheeks and Brianda saw each frame of the scene in slow motion: Corso’s hand on her forearm, Corso’s face nearing hers, the brush of his rough skin against her cheek, the closeness of his lips and breath on their way to the other cheek, and his eyes, open and captivated, as they separated.
That gesture of greeting affected her very being. In this historic mansion, unaltered for centuries, her internal clock lost its rhythm. It halted in an eternal present of simultaneous events that might or might not have already happened. The distant appeared close; the close, disconcerting; the disconcerting, a loop where time bent over itself and returned to the past.
A question rescued her from the vertigo.
“Would you like to see the house?”
“I’d love to but perhaps another time,” she managed to say. “I don’t want to interrupt your work.”
Brianda went red at her own lie. There was nothing she would have liked more than to tour Lubich with Corso, but she didn’t want to seem too eager.
“The good thing about being the owner is that I can stop whenever I want.” He pointed to the dumper. “Jonas, it’s all yours.”
Jonas said good-bye and went back to work.
They stood in silence for a few moments. She wondered if he was just as overwhelmed as she.
“OK, then,” Corso finally said. “Let’s start at the beginning.”
He led her to the door of the most elegant building, over which there was a lintel with some words inscribed.
“Johan of Lubich, 1322,” read Brianda. It sent shivers through her to think of its age.
“We found this stone in a pile of rubble. I thought this was a good place to relocate it. Almost everything you see was nothing more than a shell a few months ago.”
“I must say, I’m really impressed.” Brianda glanced over the buildings to avoid looking at him directly. “I didn’t see it before you started the restoration, of course, but the result is magnificent. How did you know what to do?”
Corso smiled at her compliment.
“I had a few sketches from an ancestor that I used as a guide.”
“Your family lived here?”
“Not exactly. For centuries, Lubich was just a neglected part of the estate of my family in Siena. From the oldest wills, each new owner had to sign a compulsory clause to become sole heir, to take charge of a piece of property in the old Spanish county of Orrun. The clause didn’t specify what ‘take charge of’ meant, so for centuries my family just paid the taxes in order to retain ownership. When my father died, my brothers and I divided up the inheritance and this part fell to me.”
“So, you’d never seen it before?” Brianda asked in astonishment.
“No one in my family has been here except for one relative in the nineteenth century. He crossed the Pyrenees to see the valley of Tiles. He made an illustrated travel notebook with quill drawings of the remains of what must have been the original Lubich Manor. I based the restoration work on those sketches at first and later … I don’t know how to explain it, but a sixth sense showed me how to continue. Has something like that ever happened to you?”
“Knowing something without knowing why?” Brianda smiled sadly. “Yes, as a matter of fact it has.”
In response, Corso gave her a look so riveting that she began to tremble all over again. She sought refuge in the old hall, as massive and grandiose as the rest of the bui
lding, dominated by the most beautiful staircase she had ever seen. The stone steps and bannister led to a landing presided over by a religious painting. There, the stairs forked in two diverging arms with ironwork bannisters, then swooped around and converged on a door.
“That door leads to the bedrooms, but let’s begin downstairs.” Corso pointed to some antique doors under the stairs.
Brianda thought she’d use up her repertoire of adjectives and expressions of amazement during her tour of the main floor. She opted for politely nodding at Corso’s explanations. Even though she found the decoration as excessive as the construction, he kept telling her how many things still needed to be unpacked and or to arrive from Italy to make the house warm and welcoming. Brianda didn’t know what world Corso came from exactly, but it had to be very different from the world of other mortals. He talked about the furniture without any affectation, as if the grand pieces were family. On his lips, a word like “cornucopia” to describe the gold mirror he was now showing her didn’t sound extravagant; instead, it simply expressed an object with a history, an anecdote on how he had come by it. His words transformed the house from a cold, static museum to a vibrant gallery full of life.
“And this is the last room on this floor.” Corso led her into a small room where most of the objects were still wrapped in padding. “It leads to the front patio.”
Brianda’s gaze fell on a small walnut chest with traveling handles at either end. The chest sat on a narrow, bowlegged table. She didn’t know much about antiques, but the piece seemed special.
“What is this?” she asked.
Corso approached and opened the lid, revealing a series of drawers inside.
“It’s a writing desk or cabinet.” He pulled the ring of one of the little drawers. “It was used for storing important documents, valuable objects, or money. The lid was used for writing on. I inherited it with the house.”
Brianda was puzzled by how this piece was with the house. Corso must have noticed she was curious and explained, “I don’t know why, but this particular object is attached to the house. Generations of my family members have been very clear about that in their wills.”