Manuel Rivas: The Low Voices

When they reached the houses, the bleeding had stopped. And formed a scab. It looked good on the child’s leg.

‘He’s going to stay with us in the village forever. He’s going to be a wild thing!’

More laughter. What to do? You had to read everything they said back to front.

My father told me the story of a wild man. Perhaps so that I would know what a wild man was really like. His name was Ganzo. He met a girl, and they fell in love. He would come down from the mountains, from a more isolated village. On horseback. Her father didn’t approve of the relationship. He suspected that his daughter was disobeying him and locked her up at home. He was always on the lookout. Here was a man who wielded a stick, with a reputation for being very harsh. He also had a shotgun. Not an easy man to stand up to. Every Sunday, Ganzo would come down and plant himself in front of their house, motionless for hours and hours, staring at the front door. Night would fall, and he would leave. Nobody ever came out to talk to him. But the following week he would be back. One day, the door opened and the girl’s father emerged with a weapon.

‘What do you want, Ganzo?’

And he replied with a historic command:

‘Release the captive!’

The girl’s father was deeply affected, perplexed. This man from the mountains had shown him up in front of everybody.

Sometimes, when I’m writing, I am reminded of this story. The ending. Those surprising words, which were said in Spanish with medieval brio. The precise use of the delicate term ‘captive’. I mentioned it to him one day. My father clicked his tongue. Gazed at some indeterminate point in the distance.

‘That’s not what he said.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Really.’

He saw the disappointment in my eyes. I understood we were studying the same subject matter in our own, different ways. On the borders of truth and fiction.

‘What did Ganzo say?’

He looked at me. He was about to say it. He smiled inwardly. Didn’t say anything.

‘You have to tell me,’ I pleaded with him.

‘It would be better to drop it.’

‘What did he say?’

He seemed now to hesitate, not between fact and invention, but between two realities.

‘ Let the bitch go! That’s what he said.’

‘ The bitch ?’

‘Yes. It seems that’s what he said.’

‘The other one was better.’

We were sitting on the porch. There was a plant that had drawn his attention. How quickly it grew. Its jubilant green colour. He was also on the verge of saying something about that plant, but he never did. It was a cannabis plant sown by María.

‘I’ll tell you what happened,’ he said, with reference to Ganzo. ‘One heard one thing, another heard another.’

‘But what do you think he said?’

‘I don’t know. The girl’s father shot at his feet to frighten him away. But he stayed where he was. He didn’t flinch. I heard the shot. That much is certain.’

After one village, there was another, more distant village, which was the former’s remote place, the last frontier, but after this village there would be another, and another that had its own remote marker, in a geographical chain towards the unknown, which was a kind of imaginary reverse. In reality, everything formed a mental geography, a dense confederation of villages, an unending intersection of roads. The remote place might be an hour’s walk away. I remember that the first pilgrimage we ever went on, from Corpo Santo to San Bieito, was a long way. It was very hot, and by the sides of the road there were cherry trees that offered shade and fruit. We couldn’t reach the branches, but the adults gave us some to eat. They were happy, and so were we. Processions were always something more than just a Mass. They were a party that transformed the day. Suddenly the sides of the road converged into a corridor of bodies and groans. Cripples. Blind people. Disfigured faces. Women in mourning with babies on their bosoms. I’d seen people begging before, but not in such a choral way. I was impressed by the psalmody of their voices and above all, at a child’s height, by the mute expression, the fixed gaze, of their stumps. The rite of healing, exorcism or protection in San Bieito involved passing through a hole in a stone wall. For children it was easy, but not for an adult. If the adult was fat, seeing him there, half his body on one side and half on the other, was comical to begin with. But misfortune — if it’s going to be funny — mustn’t last. Losing one’s balance and falling over. Slipping on the pavement. A slap that knocks the other over. A pie in the face. One’s trousers falling down. All of this is funny if it doesn’t last. When someone is trying to pass from one side to another, through a gap in the wall, and this is a holy, curative rite, and it’s obvious he can’t, he gets trapped, his face becomes sweaty and distorted, it’s like witnessing the comical and its reverse at one and the same time. The miracle doesn’t exist, but its defeat does. The flailing arms of the carnal metaphor. Everybody pushing, the encouraging voices, would sometimes ensure a successful passage, and the body would collapse on the far side, like someone falling onto the grass of the imagination. Relief would sweep through the crowd. A general comforting of people and stones. Relief. That must be the closest thing to a miracle.

No, San Bieito wasn’t far. But it was for me. It was the first time I saw a blind man with one eye that laughed and another that cried. The hole in the stone united ailments and parties, whoops and groans, petitions and sky rockets, dawn and dusk. And the image of the wall, like a border with the beyond, with its round passage, like a curative, but also a sarcastic and occasionally cruel eye. I ended up realising San Bieito was part of a country that was both invisible and omnipresent. A cobweb blown and transfixed by the wind of history, but not broken. Many of our first trips, aside from family visits, were to sacred places which appeared on the calendar as feast days. Pilgrimages, at least part of which one did on foot. Today, if allowed to, cars will penetrate and profane even the fairground. There’s a reason for going on foot. With a votive offering on one’s head. To give time to the sacred. This is the time for approaching what is eccentric. When I write, I go on foot. Determined, content, with a cherry from time to time. Until the legs start trembling because over there is the wall. And the hole in the wall.

Sometimes, one doesn’t arrive, and that’s because of not going on foot. This happened the last time I went to Santo André de Teixido, the most eccentric and possibly the most authentic pilgrimage. By car. In the company of Liz Nash, a British writer and journalist, the whole way talking to her about the saint who came by sea in a stone boat. Explaining the meaning of this expression, ‘stone boat’, which refers to the type of ballast. Interpreting the legend that says whoever doesn’t go to Teixido when alive will go when he has died. The reason for not killing animals, even insects, since they could be deceased people on the road. The idea of re-existence, the transmigration of souls, in popular knowledge. And so on.

Until we get to the sanctuary. The sun sets the sea ablaze, while expert nature prepares a beautiful sunset for the last remaining pilgrims. At the side door of the temple is a priest in a cassock and clerical collar. It’s the end of the day for him too. Liz goes to talk to him and asks for his interpretation of the legend. Through the half-open door can be seen the pale anatomies of wax votive offerings, like broken toys waiting for a miracle. She’s really very interested. It’s fascinating to come across a living belief in the transmigration of souls — such an oriental philosophy — at the far end of Western Europe. The priest takes a swig. Glances over at me. Gazes at the sea. At Liz.