B0040702LQ EBOK (45 page)

`If she were dead, he might triumph over Hell. If she
remains alive, perhaps both will be lost ... The power of a
poor woman like yourself is not enough to combat infernal
knowledge-. . .'

My mother sobbed:

`What about the grace of God?'

There was a long silence. The friar must have been
immersed in prayer, considering his response. Basilisa la
Galinda had me clutched to her bosom. We heard the friar's
sandals approaching, and the old woman loosened her grip on
me slightly in order to prepare for flight. But she stayed where
she was, held by the voice that said:

`The grace of God is not always with us, my daughter. Like
a spring it flows forth and like a spring it can run dry. There
are people who think only of their own salvation and never
feel love for other creatures. They are the dry fountains. Tell
me, what did your heart feel when I told you that we were in danger of losing a Christian? What are you doing to help
avert this black accord with the infernal powers? Do you deny
him your daughter so that he may have her from Satan?'

My mother cried out:

`Holy Jesus is more powerful than that.'

And the friar replied in vengeful tones:

`Love should be given equally to all creatures. Loving a
father, a son or a husband is like loving figures of clay. Albeit
unwittingly, you too, with your black hand, are raining blows
down on Jesus on the cross just as the student from Bretal did.'

He must have been holding out his arms to my mother.
Then we heard a noise as if he were leaving. Basilisa and I
moved away from the door and we saw a black cat slip past us.
No one saw Father Bernardo leave. That evening, Basilisa
went to the monastery and came back saying that Father
Bernardo was leading a retreat, many leagues from there.

XIII - How the rain beat against the window panes and how
sad the evening light was in every room!

Antonia was sitting near the balcony embroidering, and our
mother, reclining on the couch, was staring at her hard, with
the hypnotic gaze of glass-eyed statues. A great silence hung
about our souls; all one could hear was the pendulum clock.
Antonia paused once, lost in thought, her needle poised in the
air. Our mother sighed on the sofa, and my sister blinked
rapidly as if waking from a sleep.Then the bells of many
churches began to ring. Basilisa brought in the lamps, looked
behind all the doors and barred the windows. Antonia went
back to daydreaming over her embroidery. My mother
beckoned me to her and kept me by her side. Basilisa brought
in her distaff and sat down on the floor near the couch. I could
hear my mother's teeth making a noise like castanets. Basilisa
fell to her knees, looking at her, and my mother moaned:

`Get rid of the cat that's scratching beneath the couch.'

Basilisa bent down:

`What cat? I can't see one.'

`Can't you hear it either?'

Striking the floor with her distaff, the old woman replied:

`No, I can't hear it either.'

My mother shouted:

`Antonia, Antonia!'

`Yes, mother.'

`What are you thinking about?'

`Nothing, mother.'

`Can you hear the cat scratching?'

Antonia listened for a moment:

`Not any more.'

My mother shuddered:

`It's scratching right by my feet, but I can't see it.'

Her fingers dug into my shoulders. Basilisa wanted to bring
a lamp closer, but it was blown out by a gust of wind that
rattled all the doors. Then, while our mother shouted, holding
my sister by the hair, the old woman used an olive branch to
sprinkle holy water in every corner of the room.

XIV - My mother withdrew to her bedroom, the bell rang
and Basilisa ran in to her. Then, Antonia opened the balcony
windows and looked out at the square with somnambular
eyes. She moved away, walking backwards, then fled. I
remained alone, my forehead resting against the panes of glass,
where the evening light was dying. I seemed to hear shouts
from inside the house, and did not dare to move, under the
vague impression that the shouts were something I should
ignore because I was a child. I did not move from my place by
the balcony windows, going over and over my fearful, childish
thoughts, all tangled up with the nebulous memory of being
told off sharply and shut up in a dark room. It was like a casing
about my soul, the painful memory, shared by precocious
children, of listening, with wide eyes, to the conversations of
old women, of leaving my games to listen. Gradually the
shouts subsided and, when the house was once again in
silence, I fled the room. As I went through a door, I found
Basilisa.

`Don't make a sound, young master!'

I stopped on tiptoe outside my mother's bedroom. The
door was ajar and from within came a sorrowful murmur and a strong smell of vinegar. I slipped in through the crack, without moving the door or making a sound. My mother was
lying down and had a great many cloths soaked in vinegar
wrapped about her head. Her black-gloved hand stood out
against the whiteness of the sheet. Her eyes were open and, as
I went in, she turned them to the door, without moving her
head:

`My child, shoo away that cat at my feet!'

I went over to the bed and a black cat jumped to the floor
and ran away. Basilisa la Galinda, who was standing at the
door, saw it too and said that the reason I had been able to
frighten it away was because I was an innocent.

XV - And I remember my mother one very long day, in
the sad light of a sunless room with its windows slightly
open. She was motionless in her armchair, her hands folded
on her breast, still with a lot of cloths wrapped about her
head, and her face white. She didn't speak and, when others
spoke, she turned her gaze on them, imposing silence. That
was a day without hours, immersed in a kind of early
evening gloom. And that day ended suddenly, because servants rushed into the bedroom carrying lamps. My mother
was screaming:

`The cat! The cat! Get it off me, it's clinging to my back!'

Basilisa came over to me and, with a great show of mystery,
propelled me towards my mother. She crouched down and
whispered in my ear, her chin trembling, the hairs on the
moles on her face brushing my cheek.

`Make a cross with your hands!'

I did so and Basilisa placed them on my mother's back.
Then she said in an urgent voice:

`What do you feel, child?'

Frightened, I replied in the same tone of voice:

`Nothing, I don't feel anything, Basilisa.'

`Can't you feel her burning?'

`I can't feel anything, Basilisa.'

`Not even the cat's fur?'

`Nothing!'

And I burst into tears, frightened by my mother's shouting.
Basilisa lifted me up and put me out in the corridor.

`You naughty boy, you must have committed some sin,
that's why the evil one isn't frightened of you!'

She went back into the bedroom. I remained in the corridor, full of fear and anxiety, pondering my childish sins. The
shouting continued in the bedroom and servants came and
went through the house carrying candles.

XVI - That long, long day was followed by an equally long
night, with candles burning before all the holy images and
muttered conversations being held outside doors that creaked
as they opened. I sat down in the corridor, near a table on
which stood a candlestick with two candles, and I started
thinking about the story of Goliath. Antonia, who came by
with a scarf pulled low over her eyes, said to me in a shadowy
voice:

`What are you doing here?'

`Nothing.'

`Why aren't you studying?'

I looked at her, astonished that she should ask why I wasn't
studying when our mother was ill. Antonia disappeared down
the corridor and I returned to the story of that gigantic pagan
whom a mere stone could kill. At that time, more than anything else, I admired the boy David's skill with the slingshot. I
intended to practise next time I went for a walk by the river.
I had a vague, fantastical idea that I would aim my shots at the
pale brow of the student from Bretal. And Antonia came by
again carrying a small brazier in which she was burning
lavender.

`Why don't you go to bed, child?'

And again she ran off down the corridor. I did not go to
bed, but I fell asleep with my head resting on the table.

XVII - I don't know if it was one night or many, because the
house was always dark and candles were always burning
before the images. I remember hearing in my sleep my
mother's shouts, the maids' mysterious conversations, the creaking of doors and a small bell being rung out in the street.
Basilisa la Galinda came for the candlestick, took it away for a
moment and brought it back with two new candles in it that
barely gave out any light. On one of those occasions, as I raised
my head from the table, I saw a man in shirtsleeves sitting
opposite me, sewing. He was very small, with a bald head and
a scarlet waistcoat. He greeted me with a smile:

`So the scholar fell asleep, did he?'

Basilisa trimmed the candle wicks.

`You remember my brother, don't you, my dear?'

Though dragged from the mists of sleep, I did remember
Senor Juan de Alberte. I had seen him on certain afternoons
when Basilisa took me to visit the cathedral towers. Her
brother would be sitting beneath the vaulted ceiling, darning
cassocks. Basilisa sighed.

`He's here so that he can go and call for the holy oils from
the Corticela Chapel if they're needed.'

I started to cry and they told me not to make a noise. I
could hear my mother's voice:

`Shoo the cat away! Shoo it away!'

Basilisa la Galinda went into the bedroom which was at the
foot of the stairs leading up to the attic, and emerged bearing a
cross made of black wood. She murmured a few obscure
words and made the sign of the cross on my chest, on my back
and on my sides. Then, she handed me the cross and took her
brother's scissors from him, large, rusty tailor's scissors that
made a metallic sound when you opened them.

`We must do as she asks and set her free ...'

She led me by the hand into my mother's bedroom; she was
still shouting:

`Shoo the cat away! Shoo it away!'

As we went in, Basilisa said in a low voice:

`Go over to her very slowly and put the cross on the pillow.
I'll stay here by the door.'

I went into the bedroom. My mother was sitting up, her
hair dishevelled, her hands extended and her fingers clenched
like claws. One hand was black and the other was white.
Antonia was looking at her, pale and imploring. I walked round her and looked into my sister's eyes - they were dark,
deep and dry of tears. I climbed noiselessly onto the bed, and
placed the cross on the pillows. Basilisa stood hunched in the
doorway. I only saw her for a moment, while I was climbing
onto the bed, because, as soon as I placed the cross on the
pillows, my mother began to writhe about, and a black cat
slipped out from under the blankets and escaped towards the
door. I closed my eyes and heard the snip of Basilisa's scissors.
Then she came over to the bed on which my mother still lay
writhing and carried me out of the room. In the corridor,
near the table behind which lay the tailor's dwarfish shadow,
by the light of the candles, they showed me two black strips of
material that stained his hands with blood and which he said
were the cat's ears. And the old man put on his cloak and went
off to call for the holy oils.

XVIII - The house filled with the smell of wax and the
confused murmur of people praying ... A vestmented cleric
rushed in, his fingers to his lips as if commanding silence. Juan
de Alberte guided him through the various doors. The tailor's
stiff, dwarfish figure ran ahead of him, looking back over his
shoulder, his cloak dragging on the ground, his cap held
between two fingers the way artisans do in processions.
Behind them came a dark, slow-moving group of people,
praying in low voices. They walked through the centre of the
rooms from door to door, keeping strictly to that path. Various
shapes could be seen kneeling in the corridor, and their heads
began to appear one by one. They formed a queue that
stretched as far as the open doors of my mother's bedroom.
Inside, knelt Antonia and Basilisa, wearing mantillas and each
carrying a candle. A few hands appeared from beneath the
dark cloaks and pushed me forwards before returning swiftly
to the crosses on their rosaries. They were the gnarled hands
of the old women who were lined up along the wall, praying
in the corridor, their slender shadows cleaving to their bodies.
In my mother's bedroom, a weeping woman, clutching a perfumed handkerchief, and who looked to me as purple as a
dahlia in her Nazarene habit, took me by the hand and knelt down with me, helping me to light a candle. The priest
walked around the bed, mumbling in Latin, reading from his
book ...

Then they lifted the covers and revealed my mother's feet,
stiff and yellow. I realised she was dead and stood there terrified and silent in the warm arms of the beautiful woman, all
white and purple. I felt like crying out in terror, but I felt too
an icy prudence, a subtle tedium, a perverse modesty as I was
held between the arms and bosom of that lady all in white and
purple, who bent her face to my cheek and helped me hold
the funerary candle.

XIX - Basilisa came to take me from the lady's arms and led
me to the edge of the bed where my mother lay stiff and
yellow, her hands tangled in the folds of the sheet. Basilisa
lifted me up so that I could see the waxen face more clearly.

`Say goodbye, my child. Say: Goodbye, mama, I'll never see
you again.

She put me down, because she was tired, and then, after
taking a breath, lifted me up again, placing her gnarled hands
beneath my arms.

`Take a good look. Keep the memory for when you're
older. Now, my child, kiss her.'