In the last few weeks one question had stuck in Brother Darder’s mind, and every day he could feel it lodged deeper in his head, and closer to his heart: Where was God? Where was He hiding while all of this was unfolding? Why did He not respond? Brother Darder sought relief by filling his nights with tears and prayer, but neither weeping nor praying brought a response: the silence merely swirled around like a cold wind in Brother Pau Darder’s brain, which was constantly lacerated by the same question. Where was God? Why had He abandoned them, as He had abandoned His Son, nailed to the Cross? Love and compassion, where were they? Yes, it was true, like the entire city of Barcelona, Brother Darder’s soul had been poisoned, transformed into a piece of boiled sweet potato in Brother Plana’s drooling mouth.
“Bon dia, Brother Darder. Have you seen Brother Gendrau?”
Brother Darder was always slightly embarrassed by his dark thoughts when he was in the presence of the indefatigable Brother Lacunza. The parsimonious, unassuming Navarra native, who was the director of a Marist seminary in Burgos, had had the misfortune of accepting the invitation of the Provincial Superior of the Marist Order in Catalunya to teach a summer course for novices at the Casa de les Avellanes, in Balaguer. And that is how Brother Lacunza happened to find himself in one of the worse possible places in Spain on the day the war broke out. After that he was forced to go into hiding, as they all were, and he had not been able to return to Burgos, or even to Navarra, where he would no doubt have enjoyed very different accommodations.
But he never complained or showed any displeasure at this misfortune. Quite the opposite: he and Brother Pere Gendrau had immediately placed themselves at the service of the provincial superior, their mission being to move heaven and earth in search of a solution. There had to be some way to leave that crazed city, and they had to find it. Through some remaining contact at City Hall, the superior had procured a few safe-conducts, signed by the president of the Supply Committee, allowing free circulation in the city, and Brothers Lacunza and Gendrau, on behalf of the superior, had been using them to meet with authorities in an attempt to secure permission for members of the order to leave Barcelona. So far, all of the negotiations had failed. It had been impossible to obtain passports or safe-conducts to go abroad. But what had seemed like an opportunity presented itself toward the end of July: an Italian ship had arrived at the port of Barcelona to collect the first group of refugees. With a recommendation from an Italian acquaintance of his known as Mageroni, Brother Lacunza had managed to extract from the Consulate the promise to embark the Marists together with the other refugees, provided they had the pertinent approval from Senyor Josep Maria España, the minister of the interior of the Generalitat, the Catalan government. But the honorable personage had refused to sign the authorization, fearing that the anarchists—who controlled ports and borders—would kill him if he did. This first failed attempt was followed by others before the French and German consulates, and also the minister of culture of the Generalitat, Senyor Ventura Gassol. All of them had listened with serious demeanor and understanding nods, and all had gently rebuffed the religious with a repertoire of stale excuses. In the meantime, the news reached them that surveillance patrols had killed more than fifty Marist Brothers in Catalunya after they were caught trying to flee or hiding in some pension or private home. Like the brothers in Pension Capell, who any day could be discovered or betrayed or God knows what, and then trampled like a nest of ants. Yet despite this, Brother Lacunza and Brother Gendrau (who had assumed in the eyes of Brother Darder the role of the father he had lost) had maintained a sort of impenitent optimism that allowed them to continue searching for a means of escape, their zeal growing with each new door that closed. Yes, Brother Darder admired their spirit and was embarrassed by the blandness that guided his own. But he also detected, and this troubled him, a rather pathetic touch of unswayable determination in Brothers Lacunza and Gendrau. After all, if it was God’s decision to turn a deaf ear on their plight, they would not be the ones to force Him to listen.
“No, Brother Lacunza, I’m sorry. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen Brother Gendrau all morning.”
“I checked his room, but he wasn’t there . . .” Brother Lacunza was holding an envelope in his right hand and paced nervously. “Well, I’ll try to find him. If you see him, please tell him I need to speak with him. It’s urgent.”
“More bad news?” Brother Darder assumed, with a grimace of compunction.
“I don’t know yet, I don’t know . . .” murmured Brother Lacunza anxiously. “I received this and need to discuss it with Brother Gendrau. It’s a letter from the Federación Anárquica Ibérica . . .”
“From the FAI?” exclaimed Brother Darder. He was unnerved, thinking someone at Pension Capell had informed on them to the anarchists, perhaps even Doña Gertrudis, the woman in charge, no doubt fed up with their presence.
“It seems so,” huffed Brother Lacunza. “It’s signed by two of the top members of the Department of Investigations.” He pulled the paper out of the envelope and read: “Aureli Fernández and Antoni . . . Ordaz. Yes, that’s it.”
“But what do they want? How is it they have contacted you?” inquired an increasingly frightened Brother Darder.
Brother Lacunza shook his head and opened wide his hands and eyes.
“Some young men handed it to me in the middle of the street, on Passeig de Gràcia. Three men, one of them a Marist.” Ignoring the sweat pearling on Brother Darder’s brow, he added: “It’s an appointment. They are requesting a meeting with representatives of the Marist order on the twenty-fifth. Not far from here, in Plaça Universitat.”
“But . . .”
The door opened and Brother Plana stuck his rat-like head into the room.
“Brother Darder . . .” he stammered.
“What do you want now?” Brother Darder asked impatiently. “I’ve already heard your confession, remember? And besides, I’m speaking to Brother Lacunza.”
“Yes, yes, I can see that . . .” He stuttered again. “Forgive me. It’s about Brother Gendrau.”
•••
“Confiteor Deo omnipotenti vobis fratres, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opere et omissione, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Virginem, omnes Angelos et Sanctos, et vos, fratres, ores pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum . . .”
Muffled by the sound of the rain against the glass windowpanes, Bishop Gabriel Perugorría’s strained voice flowed gently through the Santa Agata Chapel in the Capuchin Convent in Sarrià.
“Amen,” twenty-seven cheerful voices responded in unison.
They were celebrating a special liturgy to mark Sister Adoració’s one-hundredth birthday; despite having reached such a ripe old age, she was not the oldest in the community. Sister Ascensió, with her one hundred and four years and robust health, had an indisputable edge over the most recent centenarian, who was gnarled like an old branch and clung to her cane. So hunched was Sister Adoració that it was sometimes difficult to distinguish whether she was standing or sitting. Sister Ascensió, on the other hand, stood tall, stout, in one piece, so to speak, her only visible symptoms of deterioration a few liver spots the size of a two-ral coin, which spread over her skin, darkening her face as if it had been forged from old copper no one had bothered to clean. If Sister Adoració appeared more and more stooped, like the tilted columns of the cloister, Sister Ascenció brought to mind a chest-of-drawers made of cherry wood. However that may be, the health and lucidity of one and the other were regarded in the community as an auspicious sign for all the sisters, and even the mother abbess sometimes referred to it with a pious joke: between the adoration of the Magi and the Assumption of the Mother of God lies an eternity of health, she would say. And they would all laugh.
They had to do something to cheer themselves in that half-deserted convent. All twenty-seven religious were aware that, if the new revolutionary order h
ad allowed the Capuchins of Sarrià to remain within the venerable walls of the monastery instead of expelling them and seizing the building, it was only thanks to the mother abbess, whose brother was an FAI bigwig—a sinister man, a cripple by the name of Manuel Escorza. In the first days of the war, he had raided the convent and made bogus arrests: the mother abbess herself, a novice named Sister Concepció, and six or seven young nuns, all of whom had been duly alerted to the plan, were made to get into a van while the other religious, unaware of the ploy, wept and prayed as they huddled together in the Santa Agata Chapel. There was a moment of horror when the squad of militiamen tasked with breaking into the Capuchin premises, carried away by an excess of enthusiasm and zeal, had desecrated the tombs of five previous mother abbesses, exhumed their mummified bodies, and hauled them to the main entrance to the convent, where the bodies remained in plain sight for more than a few hours. This caused swooning and fainting spells among the sisters, as well as a laywoman who had the misfortune to be passing by the monastery that day and found herself face to face with the mummies. The gimmick, however, had the intended effect of convincing the entire neighborhood that the Capuchin Sisters of Sarrià had been arrested and dispersed, their residence—and all other religious buildings in the city—seized in the name of the revolution. As for the members of the squad—who only began to suspect they were pawns in some twisted ruse when they were instructed to return the arrested nuns to the convent and remove the mummies in front of the building—Manuel Escorza had little trouble charging them with high treason and having them executed by firing squad to ensure there would be no indiscretion on their part.
It is easy to imagine the joy of the religious of Sarrià at the return of their beloved Mother Abbess and the young sisters, and the ensuing fervor with which they resolved to satisfy Manuel Escorza’s two conditions for not forcing them to abandon their home and subject themselves to ignominious treatment. As they were cloistered nuns, the first condition was easy to comply with: they were forbidden to have any communication with the outside world. Officially, the Capuchin convent of Sarrià had been evacuated and no one lived within the perimeter bordered by a five-meter-high wall that protected them from prying eyes. It was a building that ostensibly had been reclaimed for the people—to use the turn of phrase generally employed in these cases—until its new function could be decided. Escorza had instructed one of his deputies to see that the convent was supplied with food, firewood, clothes, and everything necessary to keep the community afloat, an easy enough task, as the warehouses were full of confiscated goods.
The second condition came a few weeks later and was accepted without questioning: the Capuchins were to welcome among them no less than the bishop of Barcelona, His Excellency Monsignor Gabriel Perugorría. After a long, tortuous persecution that had begun in the early hours of the day, the bishop had managed to escape a revolutionary assault on the episcopal palace by fleeing through a back door; Escorza had finally caught the big fish and was under strict orders to hold him in the most suitable fishbowl until he could be made use of. A surveillance patrol had arrested the bishop without knowing who he was after raiding the house of a silversmith suspected of harboring priests and nuns. At the Sant Elies detention center, someone had recognized Don Gabriel Perugorría as the poor soul ordered to strip before being interrogated and subjected to all manner of vexations, and Manuel Escorza was immediately notified. After that a number of people had to be wiped out and a false report was filed informing of the bishop’s execution, thus ensuring the necessary caution and silence. When Escorza believed there was no longer any danger of a leak, he personally escorted His Excellency to the Capuchins and delivered him to that perfect confinement he himself had devised with the connivance of his sister. The community accepted the presence of Don Gabriel Perugorría—believed in the city to have died some days before—as an auspicious manifestation of divine providence. And this was precisely the subject of the bishop’s homily during the Mass in celebration of Sister Adoració’s one hundredth birthday.
“Divine providence, sisters,” he said as his voice rose, “is the presence of Our Lord in all of creation, and it is unceasingly expressed by the eternal will to create and to preserve that which has already been created: a sovereign will through which God continues to speak according to the nature of the goodness that is uniquely His own, in the service of being and against nothingness, in the service of light and against shadows, in the service of life and against death.”
When the bishop completed a sentence he believed especially well-wrought he would raise his hands slightly and the nuns would exclaim, “Amen.” A group of six young sisters standing to the left of the altar would then open their mouths in unison and, with fine-tuned voices, intone a brief invocation:
Pie Jesu Domine.
The novice directing that small, precise chorus was Sister Concepció, who had secured the mother abbess‘s affection by accompanying her in the episode of the false arrest. The song was the beginning of the “Pie Jesu” from Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem, a beautiful accompaniment to the pastor’s words on that exceptional day. Pleased and moved by the choir’s singing, Bishop Perugorría continued.
“Let men of honor and property strip me, let illness despoil me of my strength, let me be parted from grace by sinning: not for that will I lose hope; nay, I will sustain it until my final breath, and vain shall be the efforts of all the devils in hell to wrench it from me, for with Your aid I will rise above guilt. All of my trust rests on the certainty with which I await Your assistance, for You, Lord, have singularly confirmed me in my hope.”
And the attentive nuns:
“Amen.”
And the crystalline chorus:
“Pie Jesu Domine.”
And the quick bishop:
“I have learned full well that, alone, I am fragile and inconstant; I know that temptation overpowers the most robust of virtues, yet I am undaunted by this. As long as my faith is sincere, I will be safe from misfortune, and my faith in Your coming shall remain strong, as will my faith that You will fulfill this unwavering hope.”
“Amen.”
“Pie Jesu Domine.”
“I am certain that what I expect from You will never exceed Your ability to give and I shall never have less than I hoped for. That is why I hope that You will sustain me in the face of impending risk, that You will guard me from vicious attacks so that my frailty might triumph over the most ruthless of enemies. It is my hope that You shall love me always, and that I shall never falter in my love for You. I hasten to reach the farthest confines of my hope, where I shall await You, my Maker, for all my days on this earth and for all of eternity. Amen.”
“Amen,” repeated the nuns with the same exultation that had seized the pastor.
And at that moment Sister Concepció signaled to the singers to tackle in earnest the piece whose melody they had until then merely insinuated. The chorus burst forth:
Pie Jesu Domine
Dona eis requiem
Dona eis requiem.
It was wondrous. In the vocal section, the soprano voice for which the composition had originally been conceived had been divided into two parts, a powerful canon in two voices that started in unison and unfurled in counterpoint: it was an elementary exercise, but very effective. Logically enough, the orchestral instrumentation had been eliminated, but the new vocal arrangement had faithfully respected Fauré’s achievement of harmony and melody.
Sister Concepció often devoted herself to exercises of this sort. She was the youngest of the prosperous Bachs Pinté family (Paper, Cartons and Derivatives, read the sign above the spacious Barcelona shop on Carrer Tallers that was the public face of a family business generally ranked among the most important paper companies in Spain). In her secular life, she had benefitted from an impeccable education, with special attention devoted to music, as befitted a senyoreta of her station in life. While in the children’s sec
tion of the Orfeó Català, the storied Barcelona choral society, she had received quite a few lessons in piano playing, singing, and sol-fa, some taught by Master Lluis Millet himself. This had conferred on the vivacious girl sufficient knowledge and courage to compose her first pieces, reinterpretations—she called them rereadings—of pieces and authors she admired. In addition to Fauré, who was one of her favorites (there was a time when she had added a guitar arpeggio to his Pavane and the beginnings of a lyric that started with the phrase “Jesus, guardian of my heart”), she had attempted, with mixed results, rereadings of Saint-Saëns’s Claire de Lune, Toldrà’s Matinal, and Garreta’s Amor de Mare. If anyone ever asked Sister Concepció about her curious fondness for these reinterpretations, she usually blushed and responded that her efforts were of no artistic merit, but they were important to her as a form of prayer.
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