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The Road
On their wedding night Pilar offered her bridegroom peeled dates wrapped in
sweet dried ham. He put them on his pillow, saying he'd save them for the morning, and tore into her body like
a battering-ram. They remained there for a full day and night, among the neglected morsels, which had attracted
crawling and flying insects. When he finally released her, the vermin had to be beaten away with a broom.
She had been promised to him at an age before she would have known the passion that prevent a young girl from fully
embracing an arranged marriage. When the time came, she obediently accepted him as another expectation to be fulfilled,
another preordained event that her place in life dictated. She entered her new life with the same generosity and
deference with which she obeyed God's commandments and her parents' wishes. He was a coarse man of forty years.
She was fourteen.
She moved into the marriage bed with the
delicate lace sleeping gowns she and her mother had sewn for her trousseau. She kept her body clean and sweet for
the nights, and devoted her days to domestic chores, making the house sparkle with light and lovely things, the
hearth a constant source of warm savory smells, the oven generating polyphonies of cinnamon and honey, sugar and
lemon, almonds and roses.
After his day's work he drank pints of ale
with his meal, continuing for hours in front of the fire. The evening would slip down through her flimsy grasp,
crashing into fragments on the floor, while he flung her deficiencies at her like dung, cursing her lack of culinary
skill, staring at the floor mumbling how she was a great disappointment to him, who had been promised she would
pamper him and satisfy his hunger with the inventive cooking for which she was so famous in the hamlets and towns
dotting the green valley, spitting unquenchable rage at the trick that had been played on him. And her excesses…
idleness, noisy music-making--did she care that it plagued his head with throbbing pain? holding his temples to
emphasize his torment. And why were there no children? She was probably barren as well, or maybe she drank concoctions,
given to her by some other witch no doubt, to prevent conception.
She knew that if they had a child he couldn't
tolerate what it would require, a love that would exceed him. A child might fill her heart with something too genuine,
too pleasurable. Still, a child might soften his heart and make him love her more softly.
She failed in this as well. Despite the prayers
she offered to the Holy Mother, despite the five or six times a night he woke her with his lust, despite the hours
she stood on her head, the only part of her that swelled was the painful lump on her crown. This increased his
rage and their life became divided into relentless days of his contempt and loveless nights of unrequited lust.
Her heart began to curl into itself like a snail who, without reason or warning, finds itself shell-less, curling
in upon itself, retreating to the darkest corner of the heart. There, she found a growing blaze of hate at once
so wild and tightly compressed it threatened to rob her soul of grace. She felt she would burst into flame, be
incinerated by her own bitterness.
One morning she awoke and saw him, as if
for the first time, and wondered what it was she could have possibly thought she might obtain from the sickly man
who slept next to her in a pool of glottal noise and breath that smelled like the wind had carried the pig stink
into their bed.
"I should call myself a widow,"
she thought to herself. "He looks more dead than alive. I am as miserable as one whose husband is dead, suffer
the loneliness and fear of living with a ghost, but without a widow's solitary freedom."
She thought of what she might do to remedy
the situation. In her mind she thought of ways she might become a widow. Perhaps a plague would visit their valley
and she could survive it while he succumbed. He might fall into a pit of quicksand, or have an unfortunate encounter
with a bear while hunting rabbits in the forest. He might drink too much some night and stumble on his way to the
privy, falling over the fence face down into the pig slop, suffocating in filth. She considered suggesting they
lower the fence around the sty, reasoning that they needed the higher fencing for the dogs and would save wood
by rebuilding the pig fence with shorter sticks.
As time passed, she began to unravel, lost
in her obsessions; her choices, limited to elaborately constructed disasters. Might she actually carry out some
unholy treachery upon her husband who, although he was cruel and reckless, was still a child of God?
She began to pray. She prayed while she went about her daily chores, while she took her bath, even during the rough
thrustings she endured during the nightly sieges in the marriage bed, each time a little more life leaking out
of her. Sometimes she prayed for a lust equal to his to help her bear it. Then she prayed for his transformation,
for love and tenderness, for magical powers. She prayed for release. She prayed for a knight to come and steal
her away.
But God did not grant her any of these. Her
prayers took on a kind of resigned surrender, becoming quieter, simpler, a sign, a spark.
One blue morning, while she swept the leaves
from the door, a voice rang out along the road:
"Santa Maria, Strela do dia,
mostra-nos viea pera Deus e nos guia.
Ca veer faze-los errados
que perder foran per pecados
entender de que mui culpados
son; mais per ti son perdoados
da ousadia que lles fazia
fazer folia mais que non deveria." *
She rested her broom and looked up the path
as the voice drew nearer. Then, other voices, men, women, children. She could hear their breath between notes:
"Santa Maria, Strela do dia…" a parade of people in simple brown cloth and wide-brimmed hats, cockle
shells and gourds dangling from their tall walking-sticks, clacking as they walked, mules with heavy packs, dogs
panting in the growing heat.
She walked closer to the road and saw their
faces, flushed brown and red from the tortuous incline up to the village, their eyes like torches. A smile broke
the hardened crust of her expression.
She stopped a woman with a child and asked
where they were going. The woman told her they had come from Salas and were going to The Cathedral of Santiago
DiCompostela. They stopped along the way to pray and take rest at churches and monasteries. They were devotees
of The Virgin, caretaker, healer, forgiver. She performs miracles. She cured a man in Elche of an arrow wound which
had pierced the bones of his face. No one could take it out, not with tongs, not with springs. No skill could remove
it, because God would not allow him to be cured except by his Mother.
"Why are you going to the altar of Saint
James?" Pilar asked.
"To join the Holy Mother's spirit of Love to Santiago's spirit of Courage."
"My heart has played with sin," she said. "My soul is charged
with debts it can never repay; my prayers disperse like mist in the rising sun. I am alone, even God has turned
away.
They told her God endures in all directions and cannot turn away.
She folded some essentials into a cloth, the bread she'd just taken from the
oven, leaving half for her husband's breakfast, a small sausage and some cheese, and went with them. She walked
where they walked, ate what they ate, and prayed as they prayed. After many weeks they arrived at the grand square
in front of the cathedral. She stood at the bottom of a huge stone stair. She'd never seen a building of such height
and breadth, each door as heavy as twenty trees. Anticipation and hope dilated the pupils of her eyes. The doors
opened onto a sight of such splendor it seemed she'd gained entry to the palace of a great king; a house radiant
with gold and adorned with the magnificence of idols, whose skin breathed in the flame of torches, cascades of
human hair falling down their shoulders, the music strong and resonant, a dazzling silver censor, suspended from
the ceiling, swung from one wall to the other, leaving thick billows of frankincense in its wake. She felt that
God must be the King of All Kings to live in such a place, a king-like God who would never hear her awkward, common
prayers.
That night they gathered in their camp outside
the city to celebrate, drinking wine and singing songs to Saint James. Pilar watched them for awhile, as marginal
to their revelry as watching fireflies dance. She left camp while the others drifted into exhaustion and the hermetic
sleep of red wine.
The dust from the road had settled on her hair and face, glinting in the low
sun. She hobbled along the road heading south, having walked ten hours with little rest. Driven by an insatiable
longing that had no objective, she hastened over the mountain pass, slipping on a rocky incline, breaking the strap
of her sandal. The leather slipped and shifted in agonizing rhythm to her steps, the pain of a hot blister burning
a hole through her trance. Her eyes abandoned the path, drawn to long shadows draped over a sunflower field. She
saw a dark opening in the forest beyond and tore through monstrous flowers until she reached the other side. Following
the sound of rushing water, she came to a lichenous clearing and sat down to rest on a soft bank. She took off
her sandals and sunk her feet among the dark green rocks. The water stung the wounds on her feet, a cold pain,
then merciful numbness. She fell asleep, confused and hungry.
An aching stomach woke her to the smell of
wood smoke. Perhaps there was a hut nearby where she could ask for a small bit of something for having come so
far. She walked along the stream toward the smoke until she came to a waterfall. There was no hut, but the smell
of smoke was stronger. She waded into the water to take a drink and saw a small opening behind the curtain of water.
She walked around the side and bent down to gain entry, crawling about two meters in the dark toward a flickering
light. Coming to its source, she rose cautiously before realizing the cave spanned twenty meters in all directions.
The walls shone like obsidian in the flickering fire.
An ancient woman covered in leaves crouched
in a corner like a withered sapling. She looked up from a mound of twigs and pebbles, her eyes a pair of startled
iridescent beetles. Pilar kneeled in deference, asking with gestures if she could have a drink and a small piece
of food. The old woman answered in a language that seemed all throat and tongue. She filled a clay cup with water
and gave it to her, then dropped a handful of small dark berries and green seeds into her palm. When she saw that
Pilar had eaten she began to speak in a slow songlike voice that swept from a deep resonance inside her chest to
a high pitched nasal howl. She grimaced. Then she collapsed into a chorus of delight that bounced off the cold
stone. She crooned in contentment before a great confusion overtook her. Laughter flash-fired into dread. It was
a language Pilar had never heard, yet she understood that the old woman had been alone a long time. She'd only
seen one cycle of seasons before her mother had fallen into an endless sleep, her breasts frozen by death. A she-wolf
came and suckled her and, though the milk was foul, she sucked because it was there. Her cries were like wordless
prayers, for her mother's breast, her mother's hand holding her head while she suckled. Words came in slow progression.
First, "Ma," over and over like an invocation, until the she-wolf came, continuing to come three times
a day: Once at dawn, once at noon, and once at dusk.
She imitated birds, brewing language in the
cauldron of wolf and birdsong; named the plants and animals, played with insects and small creatures. She tasted
plants, the raw meat Ma brought her, developing preferences for certain things, nuts, fruits. She learned to walk,
first on all fours, then discovered she could stand on two. She piled stones into mounds, connected twigs into
circles, and angles, found fire after a storm and discovered its warmth, built shelter from the sun and rain with
grasses, covered her body with leaves and weeds to protect her as she moved from place to place. Once, after she'd
drunk her fill from Ma's teat, she offered her a treasured bit from her own store. Ma nibbled gently at the sweet
meats in the tiny palm. A deep tenderness grew between them. They went on this way for what seemed a lifetime.
Then Ma grew weaker and slower, coming less
frequently, more randomly. Until she never came at all. When had she stopped waiting?
There had never been any other visitor to her cave, animal or human, until this day brought her Pilar.
The old woman made Pilar a warm place near
the fire. She settled into the bed of fur and grass, sinking into an easeful sleep. She woke intermittently to
the aroma of roasting nuts. When she'd slept enough, there was a warm bowl of chestnuts and stewed dried fruits.
The old woman cupped her twisted fingers
and lifted rose water from a bowl to Pilar's face, bathing her eyelids, brow, temples and cheeks with fascinated
attention to the first human face she'd seen since her mother had died. Pilar allowed herself the gentle fingers
on her face and ate the warm food.
Pilar called the old woman La Bruja. "Bruja!"
in the darkness when the crimson face of her husband, spitting in rage, took over her dreams. "Bruja!"
to come and taste the treats she invented with the things she found growing in abundance near the cave: mushrooms,
dandelions, wildflowers. They lived together this way for what seemed a lifetime.
One Spring morning Pilar left the cave and
went to look for wild grasses to make fresh bedding. The day was so sweet that she decided to wander. She hadn't
ventured past the fields of towering sunflowers since the day she'd found La Bruja's cave. She wondered if the
road still existed, as if it might have disappeared behind her steps, the way her old life had been exiled to dreams.
It began to rain. She found a stand of trees and covered herself with some of the long weeds, falling asleep. She
woke in darkness and the rain had turned to mist. The moon looked like a crazy eye.
She continued in the dark through the high
field of sleeping monsters until she found the place in the road where she'd turned from loneliness so long ago.
Had the course of her husband's life reached its end by now? Could she resume the course of her previous life in
comfort and peaceful contemplation? All she had to do was follow the road and she could re-enter the world of cloth
and metal, of brooms and hearths. She was free to go forward or retreat. Her feet began to move ahead without waiting
for her to make up her mind.
After solitary weeks of wrong turns and near
starvation, Pilar came to the path that led to her old house. A huddle of leaves crowded the door where no one
swept anymore. She kicked them away and pushed hard until the door creaked open. A family of rats scattered among
broken chairs and decaying things she couldn't identify. She stepped outside to be sure she had not made some mistake.
She recognized the oak tree, though it had grown much taller, and the way the path meandered toward the road. She
sat on the ground and wept for all the illusions she'd discarded, for all the grim realities she'd replaced them
with.
Then she thought of La Bruja, who she imagined
must be waiting in confusion, wondering what had become of her. Why had she left that place where she'd finally
found peace? What had driven her to return to this miserable place which had finally come to reflect its true nature?
And so she retraced her steps back to the
crossroads of her desires, ripping her way through the sunflower field, back to the waterfall, scrambling through
the hole where she would explain her absence and promise to never leave again. She rose up into the familiar dankness
and barely made out two identical heaps, side by side in the center of the cave. As she drew nearer, she could
distinguish that one was the cold ashes of a fire and one was La Bruja. She put her cheek to the old woman's face
to see if she was merely sleeping, or if her soul had separated from its mortal slag. La Bruja squeaked and opened
her eyes.
Pilar looked into the startled-beetle eyes of the old woman. A defeated child
stared back at her, reaching for her breast, her eyes frightened by the ghost of hunger, her toothless mouth open,
crying a lament:
"It's a cold God that led me here. There
have been so many detours, I've forgotten where I came from."
Pilar cradled La Bruja in her arms. Rosewater
mingled with the salt of tears. The old woman took her fill and died.
* "Santa
Maria, star of the day, show us the way towards God, and guide us.
You succeed in that those who are lost and mistaken in the commission of their sins understand that they are guilty;
but you forgive them for the boldness that makes them do mad things which they should not."
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