Caminos Page 7

  The Real Compañía had closed the smelter for three weeks to clean and repair the zinc furnaces and retorts. Most of the Gallego workers took the opportunity to go home and visit their families. Antonio generally passed the time sleeping late, prowling the trails along the coastal bluffs around Arnao, and helping with the farm work at Las Cepas. Today was a Monday market day, and Antonio Primero had invited him to come along. Segundo was not keen on rising before dawn to go to work in the market, but he was happy for the chance to meander around in Avilés with Mercedes after their goods were sold.

  “Segundo!” Primero said as if he had not seen him in a month and firmly shook Antonio’s hand. “I am pleased you finally arrived. We were afraid you had fallen off the cliffs and been washed out to sea.”

  “No, no. Just a nice late morning in my quiet little room, and then a slow stroll here. It’s a magnificent day.”

  “It’s better now that you’ve come,” Mercedes said. Despite the often intense inner turmoil she felt over the uncertainty about their future, every absence and new meeting deepened Mercedes’ love for Antonio.

  “You two go off and enjoy the town together,” Antonio Primero ordered. “We are almost finished here, and Pepe and I can tend to the shopping. Try to have my sister home before dark, Segundo. You know how the provincials are. Those old women in Naveces, who have never been more than 50 kilometers from home, will have old Father Agustín reprimanding me as if I am some dastardly communist atheist because I allowed Mercedes out with you unchaperoned.”

  The social strictures for unmarried women still were rigid in rural Spain. Custom dictated that at least one mature female relative trail along, guarding the honour of the unwed sister, niece or daughter. In Avilés, the tradition extended even to the sunny weekend perambulations of young men and women around the new Parque de Muelle, the former cruising counterclockwise and the latter strolling in the opposite direction.

  Antonio Primero rarely met a conservative notion or tradition he did not tightly embrace, but his attitude was more liberal on matters concerning his sister. She had been so badly treated by their father; she had survived on her own all those years he was in Cuba; and she was not some blushing, irresponsible girl. Mercedes was twenty-six and as capable of managing her own affairs as well as any man he knew, and more so than several.

  “Don’t worry, Primero. I’ll protect both your reputations,” Antonio Segundo said and gave his Gallego half-grin. He was always amused, and a bit perplexed, when Antonio Primero ranted to him about the “provincials.” He had never ventured outside Galicia and Asturias himself.

  “This is your town, Mercedes, so you lead the way,” Antonio said, rolling a cigarette as they walked through the market arch into Calle Muralla. “I was only here once, on the train from A Coruña when I came to Arnao. I’m guessing you’ve planned a grand tour.”

  “You know me well,” Mercedes said. She took his arm. It was a bold gesture, with them unchaperoned, but today she felt free and light and did not care what anybody other than Antonio Rivas thought. “I’ve prepared all week, pestering Antonio to tell me everything he knows about the Avilés buildings and history.”

  They paused by the Café Colón, one of the town’s newest and most popular, on the corner facing the park. They watched the men taking their afternoon red vermouths or cafes con leche—the traditional shot of espresso with an equal amount of hot milk—al fresco and competing to see who could toss the most small, wooden rings into the open mouth of the big, cast iron frog which sat near the café door.

  “Twenty years ago,” Mercedes said, “we would have been standing in the harbour. Ships sailed up the estuary and moored at the docks which stood right here, outside the old city walls, and unloaded their cargo.” Antonio agreed that the park—built on the filled-in portion of the estuary—with its palm trees, dome roofed bandstand, statuary and gurgling fountain, was a pleasant addition to the booming town.

  “But our first stop,” Mercedes continued, “is the oldest building in Avilés, from the twelfth century, and my favourite. The Franciscan Brothers’ church, just up there at the edge of the medieval town, when it was called only La Villa.”

  “I should’ve expected you’d start with a church,” Antonio said, chuckling. Other than protecting his baby brother from his father’s attempt at banishment, he had not seen much of value from priests and the Church. To the contrary, Mercedes’ travails had strengthened her religious sentiment. For many years, God was her only reliable companion and the mass her primary source of inner peace.

  “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to visit one a little more regularly,” she quipped.

  “Here we go,” Antonio said, shaking his head and smiling at Mercedes.

  “I’m not lecturing! At least not today,” Mercedes said. “You can treat it like it’s one of those hillsides you never tire of exploring.”

  As they turned up Calle La Ferrería, the principal street in medieval Avilés, the church popped into view. Antonio said: “Well, it used to be part of a hillside, anyway.” It was constructed from cut sandstone blocks of various sizes, now rounded unevenly at the edges and ridged horizontally, like a seaside escarpment, by the centuries of buffeting from ocean winds and rain.

  “I adore it,” Mercedes said. “Don’t you?”

  Even Antonio had to admit it was beautiful in its Romanesque simplicity. “It’s a lovely church,” he replied. “I understand why it’s the first place you brought me. If I was of a mind to go to a church regularly, I’d want to come here.”

  Mercedes was giddy, for the second of many times on this day. The first was when she glanced up from her last three links of chorizo lying in the basket and saw Antonio standing perfectly still amid the chaos of the market, looking at the sparkling white façades. She had wondered then, and wondered again now, what had so transfixed him. But she did not ask.

  They entered the church through its carved, rounded-arch main portal, and Mercedes knelt to say a brief, silent prayer: “Thank you for this. For this day and this man. Please keep us healthy and happy. And please keep me strong.” She eased back from the kneeler and onto the pew beside Antonio. They sat in the placid silence of the empty church, until Antonio began to fidget. Mercedes touched him on the forearm and pointed toward the door.

  Directly across from the church, Mercedes led Antonio up the narrow Calle San Bernardo—she always winced when she saw the sign: her father certainly had not honoured his saint’s name—which entered a small square after about 20 paces. Mercedes turned and pointed back at an irregularly windowed, two-storey stone and plastered house which fronted on the plaza. It was not a palace, but would have been a prominent dwelling in the walled town of the sixteenth century. “The most famous Avilesino was born there the early 1500s. Admiral General Pedro Menéndez, the founder of the city of San Agustín in La Florida, in the United States of America.”

  Antonio never had heard of Pedro Menéndez or San Agustín in La Florida, but he had thought often about the United States of America, especially since hearing Antonio Primero’s stories about their brother Ramón, who was living there in some city called San Luís.

  Mercedes continued, relating the history her brother had told her. “Don Pedro had a boat built with the money from his inheritance when he was not much more than a boy, and he defeated three French cruisers in a battle just off the coast. He went on to become one of King Felipe’s most able and successful commanders in the New World, and he is still the pride of Avilés.”

  Antonio’s mind was stuck on America. More than a million Gallegos had gone to Argentina over the past century, and now thousands more were sailing off to the United States. He was so tired of struggling to keep himself housed, clothed and fed.

  Mercedes noticed the distant look in his eyes. “Have you ever thought of going to America?” she asked, though it was a question she would rather not ask when they were having such an enjoyable day.

  Antonio was slow to respond. “I’ve thought of it as an al
ternative, if anything ever happens with my job in Arnao.”

  A dark cloud sank over Mercedes.

  “Antonio says that your brother Ramón is doing very well over there. Making good money. Bought his own house.”

  “Mmmn, yes, that’s true. He has,” Mercedes said.

  “But look here,” Antonio added quickly. He placed a calloused hand on her arm. “I’m not eager to go. For one thing, I’d guess you can’t get a decent chorizo or slice of Spanish ham in the whole country.”

  The cloud dissipated as quickly as it came.

  They went back the way they had come from the church and meandered up Calla La Ferrería, which looked for the most part as it had for 700 years: three- and four-storey sandstone buildings on either side of the narrow street, with stone arcades covering the pink, black and blonde limestone slab sidewalk pavers worn wavy by centuries of pedestrians. The medieval blacksmiths had their shops along this street, and the arcades allowed them to work outside during the gloomy, rainy days of the long Asturian winter.

  At Plaza de España, the town’s main square, they paused to admire the neoclassical municipal hall, with its eleven-arched arcade, pedimented clock face and central tower crowned with a fat bronze bell suspended in what looked like a Victorian iron birdcage.

  They crossed the square, and Mercedes pointed to a residential palace with a giant carved escutcheon on its façade and a trapezoidal corner tower topped by a green copper cupola. “That,” Mercedes said, “is the residence of the Marqueses of Ferrera. The first one, who had it built in the middle of the seventeenth century, was a descendant of Don Pedro Menéndez.”

  “That’s quite a house,” Antonio marveled. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to afford one of those for you.”

  Mercedes turned to face him and took both his hands in hers. “I don’t care if we lived in my brother’s granary, Antonio, as long as we could marry and have a family of our own. You must believe that.”

  Antonio’s shoulders stiffened, almost imperceptibly. The face of the girl in A Coruña flashed before him, which he quickly beat back into the recesses of his consciousness. Impossible to so easily dispatch was the tightness in his stomach and throat he always felt when Mercedes talked about children. Every time she mentioned it, a despair so cold suffused him that he felt chilly and his hands numb. Antonio could not escape the conviction that he was unable to care properly for children or give them the attention they deserved. He knew what it was like to be a child under such circumstances, and Antonio was determined never to inflict such pain himself.

  This fear and anxiety sprung from two sources, one practical and one existential. He owned nothing, except a small suitcase of clothes, and he had no real trade. Since he was twelve years old, Antonio had survived by manual labor, exchanging a lot of sweat for a little money. How was a man with no land and no marketable skill, who lived at the mercy of employers who could dispatch him at any time they no longer required his toil, to maintain a wife and family?

  Worse than the economic uncertainty, however, was the restlessness. It lived within him, like some virus or parasite or possessing demon. It had been there for as long as he could remember. It was not constant, and often it would quiet to a point and for such a duration that he thought it had migrated to a different host. But it always returned. And the harder he tried to ignore it, the more intensely it berated him.

  Occasionally, he thought it a positive force, pushing him toward that unknown place where he would find the contentment which seemed to lie eternally over the next hill, in the next town, out beyond the horizon on the wide sea. But most of the time, he saw it only as a tormenting spectre which had decided he would never know peace. Either way, when the restlessness came, it felt like eels were wrestling in his chest. Temporary relief came only when he yielded to it and moved on to yet another life in yet another place. As long as the restlessness plagued him, he knew, he could not shoulder the burden of children.

  “What is it, Antonio? Where are you?” Mercedes asked.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. Antonio looked up Calle San Francisco, which ran away from the square to the right of the Palacio de Ferrera. “And what’s that one?” he asked, pointing toward the Gothic church of San Nicolás de Bari, where Mercedes, María and the children had watched the Easter procession two years before. “I’m sure you know the history of that church, too.”

  Mercedes had grown accustomed to his evasions. She knew not to press. “That, ah,” she said, “used to be the Franciscan Brothers’ church and monastery. But they were driven from the city when the First Republic disbanded the monasteries in 1836. When the Franciscans returned, after the monarchy was restored, they settled in the other church.” She focused on the history and pushed away her prickling apprehensions, determined not to let them spoil this outing.

  Beyond the church, they stood on gently sloping Calle Galiano and watched an Indiano supervise the workers wrangling a tall palm tree into the freshly dug hole beside his immense new home. Two wellnourished gulls sat squawking loudly in the gutter concealed behind the Doric entablature. The five-bay neoclassical mansion, painted a vivid ochre, was the latest display of Indiano ostentation constructed on this street which for two hundred fifty years had housed only workers and the poor. “No! No! More to the left!” the portly man shouted, stamping around impatiently in his dove-coloured tailored suit and spats, a bright blue cravat around his neck.

  Though they used their recent riches to affect the lifestyle of aristocrats, the Indianos generally had begun their lives as struggling farmers and laborers, and they knew how a job should be done. And whether they built grand palacios like this one, or only a modest new farmhouse, the Indianos shared that one new tradition: planting the biggest palm tree they could afford in the garden. It was the proud emblem of an Asturian successfully back in his homeland to stay.

  As the man relished the sight of his erected palm. Mercedes and Antonio continued their stroll. Arm in arm, they explored every street and park in Avilés until the bells at San Nicolás began to announce the evening mass. It was an afternoon Mercedes often would recall for the remainder of her life: a gentle, lovely, effortless day shared by two troubled people finding a little joy in life where they could.

  Chapter 8

  Las Cepas, Asturias

  April 1912

  The rain poured and poured. Mercedes had not seen the sun in more than a week, nor Antonio for nearly a month. She despised this season of the deluges. This year the Semana Santa penitents got no respite from the raw weather. Spring refused to arrive. The cold, soggy, windy days stretched on and on. Mercedes’ mood matched the heavy skies.

  There had been much discussion recently that the strike could be settled soon. She worried what that would mean for Antonio Rivas. The Real Compañía brought the Gallegos in to replace the striking Asturians. What would happen when the Asturian workers came back to the smelter? Neither her brother, nor anyone else she asked, seemed to know. Antonio Segundo would just shrug his shoulders and roll a cigarette when she asked his opinion. She loved him, but he could be a difficult man.

  “Why are you sitting here, staring out the window?” María asked as she came into the little parlour. “You know it doesn’t help to ruminate when that darkness comes over you.”

  “I know, María.”

  “So why do you sit there, your hands unoccupied but your mind and spirit clearly burdened?” her sister-in-law asked.

  “I’m just ready for the sun, and the blossoms of spring. This winter has dragged on for long enough.”

  “It’s far better,” María said, placing a hand lightly on Mercedes’ shoulder, “to take each day as it is, and be thankful for it.”

  “Mmmn,” Mercedes grunted.

  “So what, other than the rain, is troubling you?”

  “I don’t want to lose Antonio,” Mercedes said without shifting her gaze from the rain.

  “Why should you lose him, rabbit? I know that he often keeps to himself, but why
would you lose him?”

  “It’s all this talk about the strike being settled,” Mercedes said. She turned from the window. “I can feel it, in my heart and in my stomach, that he’ll lose his job in the smelter, and then he’ll leave and go to America.”

  “Or, perhaps, he’ll be glad, at last, to be rid of that miserable toiling at the retorts every day and join us here at Las Cepas. We could use a man around full time.”

  “You know he’ll never do that,” Mercedes said dismissively.

  María suspected this was true, though she did not want to admit it to herself, her always enthusiastic husband or her frequently melancholy sister-in-law.

  “He hates farm life,” Mercedes continued, exasperated. “I can’t understand why he prefers the smelter work, and why he doesn’t want me or a family. But he doesn’t, and I should just accept it.”

  “Oh, Mercedes, that’s putting it a bit strongly, don’t you think?” María said. “It’s simply part of the Gallego character. You know how they are, God love them. Constantly keeping one eye open for the chance they may miss and agonizingly slow ever to make a definitive decision about anything.”

  Mercedes considered María’s observation. “Yes, I suppose,” she said. The cold rain beat against the window in waves with the gusts of wind. “It’s just so frustrating. After all these years alone, I have to go and fall in love with such a man.”

  “But he’s a good man!” María insisted. “He is one of the gentlest, kindest men I’ve ever known. He’s been so much help around here when we needed him, and he’s such a pleasure to have at our table. And clearly, he is smitten with you.”

  “But what good does that do me, if he never proposes marriage and is always looking out to the sea, as if something is out there waiting for him?”

  For those questions, María had no good answer. “I believe Antonio came here for a reason, Mercedes. We may not comprehend at the moment what it is, but the two of you meeting when you did was not mere coincidence. Of that I’m certain. Have some faith, rabbit. It all will be clear in good time.”