Return to Your Skin

by Luz Gabás

  He closed his eyes and ran a hand over her back, then her arm, her thigh, and her breast, as if deciphering a secret code with his fingertips.

  Brianda clung to him, burning with the same desire she had felt in the tower. But this time, the sense of need and the urgency no longer seemed mysterious. That day, she had felt she had to make up for lost time; now she understood why.

  “Can you explain it to me, Brianda?” Corso stopped and waited for her to open her eyes. He kept his gaze fixed on her as if afraid that she might faint. “I feel joined to your body, your mind, your spirit, with all my strength, forever, beyond death.”

  “Do you honestly think my story isn’t real?”

  Corso put a finger to her lips. He leaned back and dropped his gaze to his closed fist.

  “Maybe this will convince you that you have found me.”

  He opened his fingers and showed her a small object. It was a ring of worked gold.

  Brianda took it in her trembling hands, and her eyes clouded with emotion.

  Nunilo’s ring.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “In a false-bottomed drawer in the writing desk. After the edelweiss pendant appeared, I took the desk apart piece by piece.”

  She took Corso’s hand and placed the ring on his ring finger.

  “A perfect fit … ,” she said.

  “You doubted it?”

  Brianda threw her arms around his neck, and the surroundings became a blur.

  They were not in a hidden gully in the woods but galloping on a magnificent black Friesian toward the summit of a mountain infinitely higher than Beles Peak, close to the endless clouds, their perennial souls over a perishable world.

  Perhaps there was a logical explanation for all of it, Brianda thought. But logic be damned, she felt she had kept her promise.

  She had defied the laws of the afterlife to be with Corso. She had returned to him.

  She remembered the Jack London quote she had read on the wall of Angel’s waiting room.

  She also felt capable of roving the stars.

  For Corso, she would be reborn incalculable times.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In 1980, Domingo Subías, the parish priest of the small Pyrenean town of Laspaúles, in the province of Huesca, found some original documents in the church tower. The majority of these documents reference the regular running of the council—which functioned something like the offices of a present-day city hall—over more than a half century from 1576 to 1636: the leases for the butcher and the mill, the use of the mountains, neighbor’s dues, common-land and grazing rights, the number of livestock heads paid by each house, and the operational costs of the district, such as those for tolling the bells, sending messengers, or buying wine for the festivals.

  In these hundreds of pages (which, since they are of great sociological value, were transcribed and later published), two pages stand out for their brutality: the first is a macabre list of women hanged as witches in 1592; the second is the treasurer’s accounting of the expenses for the carpenter, the hangman, and the tavern on the days of executions. Just those, as neither the accounts of the trial processes nor the trials were preserved.

  The origin of this novel has to be found, therefore, in those two pages, in those names, in my innate curiosity and my relationship with El Turbón, a mythical mountain in the county of Ribagorza in a magical area extending along the valleys of Benasque, Isábena, and Lierp. But there is something much more important and unsettling. When witch trials are mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is the merciless actions of the Inquisition. I do not think it is too daring to suggest that many people are unaware, as I was, that the most cruel repression was carried out by the civil courts in their desire to maintain public order in the towns and villages, and that this continued long after the Inquisition itself rejected the death penalty for crimes of witchcraft in 1526. There were isolated places in the mountains where the local powers took the law into their own hands. The same questions that came to me when I began writing Return to Your Skin were with me for months: What could have happened in a place as small as Laspaúles for so many women to be killed over a two-month period? What sparked such a conflagration?

  In all my readings, I found a common thread that can be summarized in the following manner: the persecution of witches is symptomatic of anxieties that emerge during periods of intense social change. Anxiety and fear are the two factors that precede and allow the greatest examples of evil in history.

  With this in mind, I began to read about the decades before those terrible events in this Spanish Salem: a long period of civil war in the county of Ribagorza—renamed Orrun in the novel—between supporters of the feudal system and those in favor of following King Philip II. This novel is inspired by real events, and I think it reflects and explains the atmosphere immediately before the executions. Although the names of the characters in the county are fictitious, some are based on real people.

  For those who would like more information, and because I think it fair to mention the work of all those who enlightened me, I suggest the following bibliography:

  For a general idea about witchcraft, fear, life, and death: El miedo en Occidente (Siglos XIV–XVIII) by Jean Delumeau (2012), The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision by Henry Kamen (1999), El abogado de las brujas: Brujería vasca e Inquisición española by Gustav Henningsen (1983); on the inquisitor Alonso de Salazar y Frías in the Zugarramurdi witches case, made into the novel Ars Magica by Nerea Riesco (2007), La Inquisición española by José Martínez Millán (2009), Las brujas y su mundo by Julio Caro Baroja (1966), The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley (1952), The Crucible by Arthur Miller (1953), Storia della Colonna Infame by Alessandro Manzoni (written in 1840, with a prologue by Leonardo Sciascia in the 1982 edition), “Prácticas testamentarias en el Madrid del siglo XVI: norma y realidad” by María del Pilar Esteves Santamaría (2002), Miedo y religiosidad popular: el mundo rural valenciano frente al desastre meteorológico en la Edad Moderna by Armando Alberola Romá (2011), “Arte de Bien Morir/Breve Confesionario” by Rafael Herrera Guillén (2008), and La muerte por entregas by María Sánchez Pérez (2008). I also found the following article very revealing: “Weather, Hunger and Fear: Origins of the European Witch Hunts in Climate, Society and Mentality” by Wolfgang Behringer (1995), who analyzes the reasons for existential insecurity in the sixteenth century—climate, famine, and fear—and its terrible consequences.

  For historical context, the conflicts in Aragon and Ribagorza, and the parliament held in Monzon in 1585 in the presence of King Philip II: La rebelión aragonesa de 1591 by Jesús Gascón Pérez (2001), Aragón en el siglo XVI: Alteraciones sociales y conflictos políticos by Gregorio Colás Latorre and José Antonio Salas Auséns (1982), Historia del Alto Aragón by Domingo Buesa Conde (2000), Historia del Condado de Ribagorza by Manuel Iglesias Costa (2001), Historia de Rivagorza, desde su origen hasta nuestros día by Joaquin Manuel de Moner y de Siscar (1878), Valle de Lierp: un bello enclave pirenaico by José María Ariño Castel and Fernando Sahún Campo (2008), Bardaxí: cinco siglos en la historia de una familia de la pequeña nobleza aragonesa by Severino Pallaruelo Campo (1993), “Lupercio de Latrás, bandolero y espía” by Carlos Bravo Suárez (blog, 2008), El Señorío de Concas by Manuel Agud (1951), Relación del viaje hecho por Felipe II, en 1585, á Zaragoza, Barcelona y Valencia by Henrique Cock (1876), “Felipe II y el Monzon de su tiempo” by Amalia Poza Lanau and Joaquín Sanz Ledesma (1998, in CEHIMO Cuadernos Número 25), Ribagorza a finales del siglo XVI. Notas sobre Antonio de Bardaxí y Rodrigo de Mur by Pilar Sánchez Núñez (1992), Fueros, observancias y actos de corte del Reino de Aragón (edition of Pascual Savall y Dronda and Santiago Penén y Debesa, published in 1991 to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of the execution of Juan de Lanuza, Justice of Aragón, in 1591), and the articles and collections of documents contributed by Manuel Gómez de Valenzuela, especially those on the statutes of indictment against witchcraft and witches.


  On witchcraft in Aragon: all the writings of the expert Ángel Gari Lacruz, and the books of María Tausiet, among which I would highlight the splendid work “Ponzoña en los ojos: brujería y superstición en Aragón en el siglo XVI” (Universidad de Zaragoza website, 2004). I also would mention as useful the works of José Antonio Fernández Otal, “Guirandana de Lay, hechicera, ¿bruja? y ponzoñera de Villanúa (Alto Aragón), según un proceso criminal del año 1461” (2006), and of Manuel López Dueso, Brujería en Sobrarbe en el siglo XVI (1999). Carmen Espada Giner has written two novels on witch trials, published in 1997 and 1998 respectively: Dominica la Coja: una vida maldita, un triste destino (trial took place in 1534) and La vieja Narbona: de las sombras del alba, al resplandor de las hogueras (trial took place in 1498). There is also the recently published book, La mala semilla: nuevos casos de brujas by Carlos Garcés Manau (2013). Based on mainly unpublished documents, this book focuses on witch stories from the north of Spain between 1461 and 1662 and shows that Aragon was second only to Catalonia in the number of victims of witch hunts. Garcés Manau includes a list of 120 women tried, the majority of whom were hanged after trials in the towns and villages. Lastly, in 1999 a reproduction of the Laspaúles manuscript was published; later, its contents were transcribed and chronologically ordered by Artur Quintana and Walter Heim, who published it in the magazine Filología Alazet del Instituto de Estudios Altoaragoneses.

  The books that Father Guillem carried in his bundle when he traveled from the lowlands to the mountains deserve separate mention. This paragraph was originally part of the novel, but I ultimately decided to reserve it for the bibliography. Father Guillem carried a Bible encrusted with a gold fleur-de-lis given to him as a present by his mother on his ordination; the basic texts and manuals of an Inquisitor, Malleus Malleficarum by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger (1971, original documents circa 1489), Directorium inquisitorum by Nicolás Aymerich (circa 1376), and Formicarius by Johannes Nider (published in 1480, written in 1435–1437), as sources to consult to understand the nature of evil, witchcraft, and Satanism; “Cuestiones Espirituales sobre los Evangelios de todo el año” by Juan de Torquemada, to facilitate teaching the Scriptures to those unfamiliar with theological speculation; “Instrucciones a los Confesores” by Carlo Borromeo, to enlighten him on the application of the precepts of the Council of Trent; several sermon tracts, including those of Saint Bernard of Siena and Saint Thomas Aquinas; some notes on the erudite Dominicans from the School of Salamanca, as he would always find time for the writings of Francisco de Victoria on the moral problems of the human condition; De Statu et Planctu Ecclesiae by the Franciscan Álvaro Pelayo, to be alert to the dangers of women and the sin of relaxing in his obligations as a priest; and, finally, a copy of the successful Ars Moriendi by an unknown Dominican, illustrated with several useful prints on a person’s final moments.

  Although both the research and the plot of the novel have followed more of a historic line than an anthropological one, as is reflected by the chapters set in the past, the narrative strategy of jumping centuries was something as mysterious, attractive, and controversial as hypnotic regressions.

  Here readers may wish to put their credulity to the test and allow themselves to be guided by the Neli character to open their minds to the possibility of reincarnation, regression to past lives, progression to future ones, and the survival of the human soul. Some reading material to begin with, written by well-known professional psychiatrists, includes Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss (1988), Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation by Ian Stevenson (1974), Life After Life by Raymond Moody (1975), Life Before Life: Children’s Memories of Previous Lives by Jim B. Tucker (2006), Las trece vidas de Cecilia by Ramón Esteban Jiménez (2014), and El viaje del alma: Experiencia de la vida entre las vidas by José Luis Cabouli (2006). And I would also recommend The Star Rover, the last novel written by Jack London (1915), in which the main character, a professor convicted of murder and jailed in San Quentin State Prison, wearing a straitjacket as he awaits execution, overcomes his physical torment by traveling to another plane of existence where he goes over his past lives.

  That the isolated and solitary lands of the mountains were haunts for witches is something that has remained in the memory of the inhabitants of those valleys, as is well documented by Carmen Castán in her beautiful book Cinco Rutas con los cinco sentidos por el Valle de Benasque y la Ribagorza (2011), which, as the author says, offers us a vision not only of the tangible but also what has come to us through the oral tradition. When I was a child, in my mother’s family’s house, at the foot of the south face of the majestic El Turbón, my grandmother told me that some people had heard witches play the violin in the gullies, and that when the neighbors went to water their plots or pick vegetables, they brought rosary beads to protect themselves and put on the clothes that the witches, who liked to walk naked, left on the rocks.

  The appearance of the Laspaúles documents showed that legends are often based in something real and concrete, then refashioned by the imagination and changed over time.

  Behind the witch stories that so many of us have heard, dramatic local tragedies are hidden, some of which come to light many centuries later, as if the voices of those unjustly condemned women wanted to pass through the barriers of time and return to be heard.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Miguel Ángel Lahoz, for everything he has taught me about clothing and attire, something always useful in historical novels.

  To Olga Segura, for inspiring one of the characters and reminding me that, although there is something beyond the tangible, the most important is here and vice versa.

  To Antonio Merino, for always sharing his historical discoveries.

  To Carlos Español, for his impeccable bibliographic recommendations. It was by chance that I had the idea for this novel when he was in the middle of in-depth research on the subject of witchcraft in our area. It is always a pleasure to listen to the hypotheses and conclusions of a good narrator, which he undoubtedly is. Everything I have learned on the subject, I owe to him.

  To my friends, for being there, after so many years, and for looking after me. They know who they are.

  To my family in Sopena House in Serrate, in the Valley of Lierp, for the many tasty and fruitful evenings in the shadow of El Turbón. We continue this tradition as we remember Grandmother Pilar.

  To my mother, María Luz, and my sisters, Gemma and Mar, for the support they give me in my literary journey and in all the celebrations of our shared lives.

  To my father, Paco, for still being there.

  To my husband, José, and my children, José and Rebeca, for understanding and taking as normal my absences and difficult hours, and for being the real reason for everything.

  To Cristina Pons, for always being at the other end of this invisible wire that keeps us literally connected and for turning the creation process into an absorbing pleasure.

  To Puri Plaza, for her heartfelt words after reading the manuscript and her incisive comments.

  To Grupo Planeta for having placed their confidence in me again, and particularly the teams I have worked with over the last three intense years of my life: to Ruth González, for her availability and friendliness; to Emilio Albi, for always being the bearer of good news and good ideas; and to Silvia Axpe, from whom I learned the inner workings of a publishing house. I owe Isabel Santos a lot; her company, her smile, her endless vitality, our mutual understanding, her decisiveness, and her unquenchable professionalism as head of communications have been fundamental on all the trips and events on what, for me, has been an extraordinary and tough adventure. And to Belén López Celada, Director of Planeta—to whom I have never had the chance to personally convey my admiration for her valor, her courage, and her drive—for being with me at unforgettable moments.

  My deepest thanks, filled with warmth, to my dear editor, Raquel Gisbert, Planeta’s Director of Fiction, for her correct and necessary comments and for believing in and havin
g confidence in me and my stories. I can do nothing but learn each day from her intelligence, her perspicacity, her experience and intuition, her friendly exactitude, and her honesty.

  Lastly, my special thanks to all my readers who have been and are with me, for their warm comments to me and my family.

  Anciles, January 2014

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Luz Gabás was born in 1968 in the city of Monzon, Spain. After spending a year in San Luis Obispo, California, she studied at the University of Zaragoza in Spain, where she graduated with a degree in English literature and later became a lecturer. For years she has combined her academic work with translating, writing articles, researching literature and linguistics, and participating in cultural, theatrical, and cinematic projects. She lives and writes in the beautiful village of Anciles, which neighbors the historic town of Benasque. She is the author of Palmeras en la nieve (Palm Trees in the Snow), which was a best seller upon publication in Spain and was adapted into a major motion picture, and Como fuego en el hielo (Fire and Ice).

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Noel Hughes was born in 1967 in Dublin, Ireland. After earning a degree in History and Economics from University College Dublin, he spent many years in the business world before moving to Spain in 2006 and shifting his focus to English and translation projects.