by Joan Sales
“My first ride on Acorn will be to the monastery.”
“Don’t go there,” she replied, looking me in the eye for the first time. “The anarchists sacked it after they murdered the friars. The Virgin has disappeared. It’s terrifying. They disinterred . . .” The tremolo in her voice resounded like vibrato from the most bass string of a cello.
I could see the servant from the window – the only one still working for her – saddling Acorn at the entrance to the castle. She’s a handsome mare, a roan with a small head and a large rump. She seemed happy to be out of her stable.
“Disinterred?”
“Deceased friars out of their niches . . . anarchists up to their usual tricks. Did you know that they executed all the day labourers? Four wretches, the poorest in the village, the friars paid them a day wage more out of charity than anything else. The poor fellows wore wooden clogs and they executed them for being fascists because they worked for the friars . . .”
A conversation with Soleràs suddenly came to mind. At the time, it hadn’t struck me as important, having sounded like a caustic stream of incoherent nonsense. “These fools” – he was referring to Picó, the commander and the brigade in general – “these fools fail to appreciate the few original things that our country possesses. As soon as they come to a village they re-establish order. How vulgar! One must make the occasional sally to villages that ‘our boys’ haven’t yet reached, where anarchism still rules the roost. I can breathe there! There’s a monastery . . .” He put his fingertips in his mouth, as if relishing a parson’s brandy snap. “I’ve spent long hours there in pure contemplation and, believe me, it was all fully warranted. Particularly one mummy, on the left, with the face of a crook . . . In whose name do they want to ban us from disinterring the dead, if that’s what we feel like? In whose name? The men who did that were very likely idiots, but that’s beside the point: perhaps it’s all about proving you’re a hundred per cent idiot. Not everyone can manage that! The intellect has been relegated to history as an antique that belongs to the eighteenth century; the future belongs to idiots!” “I can see,” I retorted sarcastically, “that you’re gearing up to conquer the future.” “And why not? While we’re about it, what’s so particularly bad about digging out Virgin of the Mercy’s friars rather than Egyptian pharaohs? Why do those who dug up Tutankhamen deserve more respect? Excavators, of whatever kind, are all looking for the same thing: they want to see the look on the face of a dead man who’s had time to practise, who’s devoted time to it, whether a few decades or a few millennia. Our era, which is idiotic in the extreme, has preferred to slash the veils that cover birth and death, the obscene and the macabre; if you haven’t yet understood that, you’ve understood nothing about our era.” I replied: “Do you think our era is important because we’ve tried to understand this?”
“Do you know Juli Soleràs?”
It was a banal question to pass the time of day – almost like my saying the weather was lovely: for how could she have come to know him? But this woman is one surprise after another, judging by the look on her face. “Yes . . . ” she replied, after hesitating for a moment. “Why do you ask? Did he tell you about me?”
“Oh no, it was just an idle question. He told me about a monastery and some mummies, all quite vaguely, so he came to mind. He’s a rather eccentric young man. He has an aunt who has visions, you know? I expect you’ve heard about Saint Philomena, though obviously that’s of no particular interest to you. Was he really here when the anarchists were still around?”
“I got the impression that he and the anarchists were the best of friends. Can I ask a favour of you? Please never mention the fellow again.”
Poor Soleràs, one can see how he is gifted at inspiring less than friendly reactions. People can’t forgive him his haphazard conversations, so full of paradoxes and reticence. Trini and I are the only two who can tolerate him because we think he’s amusing. We’ve known him for so long – ever since we were at secondary school! Later, when Trini and I started living together, he’d come and drink tea with us almost every afternoon, even when we did our military service – Trini and I had been headstrong enough to move in together before I was called up – and he and I both served over the same time as acting adjutants. He shouldn’t have been drafted, they said he wasn’t fit because he was so short-sighted – or at least that’s what he told me. He asked for another test! And to think that so many do their best to be ruled unfit, while he moved heaven and earth to be recruited. Afterwards, in the barracks – we were fortunate to be sent to a regiment garrisoned in Barcelona – what he most enjoyed doing was jumping over the wall and going on a spree, especially if he was on duty. At our place, he always sat in the same chair; we felt he was like a peculiar yet familiar little bird whose rudeness one forgave because he was such good company.
Why did he come here and risk being executed by the anarchists? Was he practising being an idiot? “Nineteen-seventeen marked the beginning of a new Era, the Era of Idiots; blessed be the idiots for they shall become masters of the world . . .” – this was one of his “favourite prophecies”. It goes without saying that prophesying was a weakness of his.
The river crosses the district from south-west to north-east. Over time it has opened up a deep, narrow gully with almost vertical sides, down which I rode Acorn from that day on and far into the distance. After watering the orchards of Olivel the river feeds the ponds of the old flour mills, one of which is still working. When I walked, this mill was the furthest I ever went; it is halfway to the monastery. The miller, a man in his fifties, lives there with a wife who is as dark as the flour they grind – and toothless. They have five or six children. They mill forty-five pecks a day, though not necessarily every day: sometimes the pond takes a whole day to replenish itself, depending on the water the river brings, and meanwhile they must rest. I like to watch them milling because I’ve never seen such an old mill work. They open up the millrace and the mill starts to turn, slowly; the hopper, which they call lorenza, is a large wooden funnel that’s been broached very roughly; the grain pours out slowly and the millstone transforms it into coarse flour. Then the women of Olivel turn it into tasty brown bread. The village has three communal ovens for baking bread, and on the days they bake you can get the warm smell from afar, and the aroma of pine branches burning and freshly baked bread whets one’s appetite.
The miller makes the most of the days of enforced rest to go hunting with his ferret. He complains about the lack of game: only hare are plentiful, but he loathes them from the day he caught one eating carrion. As for otter they interest him because of their valuable pelts. His ferret is scared of attacking them, though not of going for foxes. It catches them asleep in their dens – or cado, as they say around here – jumps on their backs and in a flash sinks its teeth into their jugular. It’s a very agile male, its claws sharp as sewing needles. He has to carry it shut in its cage and handles it very gingerly because given the slightest chance it would sever his fingers. This fellow also told me about the monastery, the huge pine and fir forest that starts on the left of the river just before you get there and which, he says, extends for many leagues northwards, the direction in which you have to travel a long way before you come upon another village. A few friars, no more than two or three, succeeded in escaping through this forest. After you cross the monastery’s estate the river runs out into a lake – or more precisely a great marsh – called the Cambronera, where you can hunt ducks and other migrating birds in winter.
I took advantage of the mill pond to go for a swim, much to the amazement of the miller, the miller’s wife and the five or six little millers. They’d never seen a person dive and splash like a duck. They had some tame ducks: small, white, feathered with yellow beaks and legs that created a terrific din when I jumped in headfirst. After swimming a good half hour I’d stretch out on the grass to sunbathe. Sometimes I’d see vultures fly by overhead. They must come from a long way away, the bare mountains to the south, the A
lcubierre range, or perhaps from even more distant peaks further south, hardly visible in my binoculars through the blue mist. With Cruells’ telescope you could see the mountains were thickly wooded. As for the vultures, I’d seen, more than once, a pair flying fantastically high in the sky: I could calculate this roughly, thanks to the graduated lens of the binoculars and my idea of their possible wingspan, the female adult two and a half metres, broader than the male. I saw them glide across the firmament from one horizon to the other and not flex their wings for a second. The only explanation I can think of is that they let themselves be carried along on a current of air we can’t feel at ground level. They sometimes describe concentric circles around the sun, like gigantic moths drawn to its still flame. Of course, they aren’t flying around the sun; what can the sun matter to them? They’re circling around the vulture trap. Each village has one.
The tracks alongside the river are good for riding. Acorn loves to gallop over the soft sandy soil. The way to the monastery sometimes disappears into the river bed; the mare’s legs throw up a shower of minute drops of water where a rainbow shimmers. When evening falls and a breeze stirs you can hear birds chirping among the foliage of poplars, wild jasmine and honeysuckle: blackbirds, goldfinches, golden orioles and who knows what else. Far away, deep in the forest, a cuckoo calls out the time.
On my first day riding horseback I reached the monastery like a bedraggled hen. Acorn is a lovable beast: her large damp eyes are full of tender mystery, her tail and mane gleam darkly and almost drag along the ground as nobody bothers to trim them. But docile though she is, she can be nervous and whimsical. All was wonderful while we galloped over the sandy path, and she was delighted to be galloping after so many months shut in her stable. But when the path vanished into the river she suddenly knelt to splash and wallow in the cool water – leaving me as you can imagine.
The millers hardly give me a glance: their eyes are on my steed.
“Jesus! Ain’t that Acorn?” asks the miller’s wife, crossing herself.
“You know her?”
“Like my own child. Our dead lord’s mare, may ’e be restin’ in Glory. The whole of Olivel knows ’er.”
And that was how we came to speak about her – they’d never mentioned her until then. We gradually slipped from mare to mistress; at first I thought the miller’s wife wasn’t daring to speak freely about her, though I guessed only too clearly from her reticence and half-mumbled words that she thought and knew a lot. Spurred on by my love of gossip, I urged her to confide: “The nasty vixen,” she muttered between toothless gums, “should ’ave stayed in Barcelona with ’er own nasty brood. We can do without ’er sort roun’ ’ere.”
“What was she doing in Barcelona?”
“A maid. She worked for the old lady of the castle, who was still alive then. She were in service with them from when she were real young, no more’n fifteen.”
A maid in service: that’s why she got on so well with the lord of the castle’s mother. Such a simple explanation, but I’d never have thought of it.
“Was she like other girls from hereabouts before she went to Barcelona?”
“No, she were always by ’erself and sad like a mopin’ cat. I always said she weren’t like us, we all follow in our dad’s footsteps. Must ’ave got it from some place, if she were so stuck up. Graft an apricot tree an’ git peaches as big as your fist.”
“Shut up,” interjected the miller, who I thought didn’t quite share his wife’s hatred of the mistress of the castle. “These be secrets only known to God. When she left the village, Olivela was just a snot-nosed little girl. No more than fifteen! The sparrow’awk was the master, may ’e rest in peace now ’e be dead, for ’e made the most of ’er innocence.”
“Ah, ’er innocence, the poor wretch!” she rasped, scorning his compassionate tone. “When did she ever know what that was? We all got married for our innocence; we married for our honour, and not because we was ’ungry. But she and ’er witchy ways slipped into the castle, for bats like ’er always make their ’omes in old castles. That vixen’s witchy ways made ’er the mistress o’ the castle, and she ne’er ’ad to work in the ’arvest or pick grapes or collect shit up – none o’ that. A laydee’s life, lootenant, a grand lady’s life: in the mornin’ givin’ meal to the pigs and maize to the chickins and in the evenin’ a little walk in the orchard and before hittin’ the hay a bath in warm water with ’er sweet-smellin’ soap like a big sow . . .”
“Shut up, dear, shut up,” her husband interrupted. “Don Luis likes his little baths too. Yer goin’ to catch it comin’ out with this muck, for God’s sake.”
I was more and more fascinated by the conversation and their picturesque Spanish – which always accompanies filth; so I kept egging her on to say more and kept my fingers in her mouth, as they say, to make her talk.
“When did she come back from Barcelona?”
“Well, the second the old laydee died, may she be in ’er glory,” he explained, beating his wife to it. “Nobody in the village knew what ’ad ’appened.”
“It were goin’ on ten year ago,” she added. “She ’ad such a big belly on ’er and that were the first sign we ’ad of ’er sinnin’ bun in the oven. She gave birth in the castle, and two or three year later did it a secon’ time.”
“So was the carlà living with her?”
“Well, no, sir, ’e weren’t, ’e lived in ’is ’ouse in Barcelona, but ’e’d often come.”
“Our carlán was a lawyer,” the miller pointed out, “and ’e ’ad ’is cases to deal with in Barcelona.”
“And ’is luvvin’ in Olivel,” she added.
“Why didn’t he marry her?”
“Crikey, Don Luis!” The miller’s wife burst out laughing. “Since when ’ave lords of the castle and lawyers married shitty yokels?”
This bucket of mud was too much for me and I changed tack with the excuse that I wanted to get to the monastery.
The monastery was one of those big country houses that could have belonged to farmers or gentry, and in fact the friars did devote their time to agriculture. It was a large square house in the northern corner of a small valley planted out with vines and olive trees and encircled by a low range of barren mountains. One of the peaks is called Calvary and is distinguishable from its neighbours by the double row of cypresses that twist up to its top. It is a quiet, enclosed valley that seems shut in on itself and its aromas of thyme. Acorn takes from half an hour to three quarters to gallop to the monastery; since then, I’ve ridden that way often.
Now let me tell you what’s inside. A large doorway that looks out onto an esplanade leads straight into a lofty, spacious church that could hold a thousand people standing. That first day I crossed the threshold rather apprehensively: something weighed heavy in the silence. It was a dry, hot morning and I’d tethered the mare to a solitary elm on the esplanade. I went in. My first impression was that it was pleasantly cool. On the way there I’d been dazzled by the cruel July Aragon sun which had seared my eyes as I galloped. In the cool half shadows, as if in a cellar, I could barely see a thing. My retinas gradually adapted and I began to make out the remains of baroque altars blackened by fire, heaps of books scattered around in a mess, candelabra that had been snapped and thrown to the ground, artificial flowers, an incense burner in one corner, a lectern in another. Right at the back, at the foot of the main altar, were objects I’d have assumed were friars if they hadn’t been so still.
Several mummies had been extracted from the open niches, now emptied, in the wall behind the altar. They were arranged to create a strange tableau. Two were stationed by the foot of the altar, like a couple being married; one was adorned with a veil and a bouquet of artificial flowers. They leaned against each other so they didn’t fall. A third was leaning upright against the altar, facing them, as if he were the priest officiating.
The others, up to fourteen, lean against the wall like guests at the wedding. One has lost his balance and lies on the grou
nd. Another has a sly, crooked expression that sends an icy shiver through me, it’s so bizarre.
They must be friars of the monastery, dead a very long time. Bits of their habit still stick to their skin. They are bone dry, as if made of parchment, which is explained by the dryness of the air in this country and by the niches being located at a considerable height inside thick stone walls. They are so strange, so still and so parched! My feeling of terror vanished. How could I be petrified when the main door was wide open behind me, and beyond that the glorious rays of the midday summer sun?
No longer terrified, I did feel a keen sense of strangeness still: those objects were simply incomprehensible. The idea of a mummy is too hard to grasp. We cannot imagine we’ll become such an object someday, carried here and there, stiff and empty – emptied of what? Of soul, you will say; but whatever is that?
That must be momentous if its departure leads to such dramatic changes. What do I have in common with a mummy? Materially everything, yet in fact nothing at all.
And what does one make of this business of stationing them as if they were getting married? Obscene and macabre: they’ve grotesquely inserted a candle, maybe an Easter candle, into the bridegroom mummy. I’d like to meet the man who disinterred these mummies and make him tell all. Perhaps I’d get nothing out of him – they are all probably unaware of the symbolism they are putting into play. And as for us, what do we know of our instincts? Who has ever been that interested in the reproduction of the species . . . ? Who ever thinks about it when we’re at it? Bah, nobody remembers, yet it is nevertheless what stirs us. Sex and death, the obscene and the macabre, two abysses that make you dizzy. I feel as if the macabre has ambushed me in this village: the vulture trap on one side, the monastery on the other. And as I face these mummies, which are so dry, the endless thirst which I felt near the vulture trap returns.