Juan Ávila Laurel - By Night the Mountain Burns

We slept as best we could and woke to find that most people hadn’t slept a wink. Which was only to be expected given that we had a serious problem and nobody knew how it would turn out. But it was more than that, for something had happened in the night in that village on the other side of the mountain, something that had forced people out of their beds. A child who’d never been to the village before woke up in the middle of the night because someone was preventing him from sleeping. He screamed at the top of his voice because he felt like someone was squeezing his throat and he was choking. He thought he was dying. The adults in the house where he was sleeping realised he’d not spent a night in the village before and therefore probably hadn’t been presented to the village’s patron saint. And if he hadn’t been presented to the village’s patron saint, the patron saint wouldn’t let him sleep, wouldn’t let him remain in the settlement. The child went on screaming and they decided to go to the little church and make the presentation. But it wasn’t as simple as that, and now I’ll explain why. What we call being presented to the saint is a serious thing, though something we children never understood. In fact I still don’t understand it. On our island all children are born in the big village. Only in the event of an unexpected birth or a miscalculation by the mother does a child come into the world on a plantation, or on the way to one. In fact, whenever this occurs, the child is immediately given the name of the place it landed after coming out of its mother. For example, a friend of mine’s mother had put her load down to rest and quench her thirst at the river, a river where it was common for people on the island to stop for a rest and a drink, and that friend of mine thought it was a pleasant spot and pushed. And his mother had no choice but to let him out. When he was completely out, she bathed him in the river, tied him to her back and brought him home. And he took the name of that river. That friend of mine was very smart. His mother had just descended the steepest hill on the whole island. In fact, the hill was so steep that when the first white people came to the island and were faced with having to descend it, they turned right around and went back to the big village to get materials to build steps. Anyway, that boy’s mother had been returning to the big village from the other end of the island, and she went down the steep steps and got to the river. She put her load on the ground, or on a rock, and sat down on another rock, with her feet in the water. And she drank the fresh water from the river, which still had a fair way to travel before it reached the sea. She too still had a fair way to travel, for after her rest she’d have to put her load back on her head and start climbing up the steep steps and on towards the big village. And it was a tough climb. The thing was, that freshwater river lay between two big bodies of rock, like a creek in a valley, and the only way to get from one side to the other was by going down and up again. There was no way round, no other path that accessed the south of the island. And so that friend of mine must have thought about all the effort his mother would have to make to climb back up to the top and he decided to come out and lighten her load. He timed it well, for carrying a child on the back is far easier than carrying a child in the belly, especially with all those rocks jutting out into the path.

Anyway, I was talking about being presented to the patron saint. It’s compulsory. You’re born in the big village and the first time you go to any smaller settlement on our Atlantic Ocean island, your mother has to take you to the little church before bedtime and present you to the patron saint. You go through the church door and your mother says a few words on your behalf, explaining that you’ve come to seek his protection. Then you go home and sleep in peace. If you don’t do it, if an adult doesn’t do it for you, it’s unlikely you’ll sleep at all that night. What’s more, in this case, the patron saint of the village we’d travelled to in the middle of the night was San Xuan. I suppose it’s like San Juan in Spanish. In any case, San Xuan is the most severe of all the patron saints on our island. He wears his severity on his face, if you look at the image of him that hangs in the little church. And so when that boy was choking and unable to sleep, they took him out of the house, thinking they’d take him to see San Xuan and ask for forgiveness, for it was too late for a presentation, that time had passed. But there were a number of factors working against them. First of all, the little church closed in the afternoon, and nobody on the island had ever seen anyone go into it or do anything inside it at night; there had never been a need to. And there was practically nothing on the island to make light with. There were a few seeds that burned with a flame, though finding them was another matter, and dry banana leaves were no good, for they flared as soon as you put a flame to them and the light they gave off would have burned out before being any use. So everyone knew that going into the church in the dark to speak to the saint was no easy thing, and nobody had ever done it before. For a start, few people would have the courage to. It’s thought the saint also rests at night and no man or woman should disturb him without good cause. Another problem was that the child, the boy who was frightened and choking, did not belong to anyone in the village and the adults who were with him did not know his real name, so they couldn’t speak to the saint, that very severe San Xuan, on his behalf. So, given the multiple problems of the night, the dark and his unknown name, it was decided that speaking to the saint to ask his forgiveness was an impossibility. But the child was choking, and he might die, and as far as they could tell from the crowing of the cocks, what few cocks there were in that little village, night had barely entered the small hours. So it was decided the boy must be taken to the big village by canoe. They found a man in the village who was willing to take him but, in order to do so, they’d first have to get the child to the nearest beach, and getting to the nearest beach from that village was one of the most difficult and hazardous tasks on the whole island. That’s because the nearest beach from that village could only be reached by a treacherous pathway. Even to reach the path itself required navigating difficult slopes. And the whole trip was considered extremely hazardous by day, never mind at night, never mind at night carrying a child who was choking because he hadn’t been presented to the patron saint, the very severe San Xuan! And there was more: the plan was to take the boy to the big village by sea, and this was the sea of the village of San Xuan! Only the very bravest canoemen lived in that village. Of all the island’s canoemen, they were the ones who most risked their lives, for it was very unusual for the waves to be still on that beach, a beach full of rocks and projecting cliffs, like all beaches in the south, but here there were so many it was more like a cave. Everything about that little village was dictated by San Xuan’s severity. At least that was my experience of the place as a child, and that’s what I heard the adults say about the dangers of that coastline and the moods of the patron saint. But anyway, they decided to take that boy to the big village, for otherwise he might choke to death or die from some other sickness. They were adults and that’s what they decided to do, though they knew it was a very difficult task. So they put that child on the back of one of the women and they started down the path, and the women said prayers behind them. This would have frightened me. Whenever there were prayers it was because there might be tears; that’s to say, if there were prayers there was danger. What’s more, those women prayed knowing that the whole drama was unfolding without the saint’s knowledge or consent. I think deep down those prayers were for San Xuan, that he might show them mercy and not cause their journey to end in catastrophe.