Cathedral of the Sea

by Ildefonso Falcones

  Yet Joanet continued to say nothing. His only reaction was when he burst into tears each night. Bernat and Arnau lay quietly on their mattress, until it seemed the poor boy ran out of energy and was overcome by a fitful sleep.

  “Joanet,” Bernat heard his son call out to him one night. “Joanet!”

  There was no answer.

  “If you like, I can ask the Virgin Mary to be your mother too.”

  “Well said, son!” thought Bernat. He had not wanted to suggest it, because the Virgin was Arnau’s secret. It was up to him to decide if he wanted to share it.

  Now he had done so, but Joanet had made no reply. The room remained completely silent.

  “Joanet?” Arnau insisted.

  “That was what my mother called me.” These were the first words he had spoken in days. Bernat lay on his mattress without moving. “She’s no longer here. Now my name is Joan.”

  “As you like. Did you hear what I said to you about the Virgin, Joanet ... Joan?”

  “But your mother doesn’t speak to you—mine did.”

  “Tell him about the birds,” Bernat whispered.

  “Well, I can see the Virgin, and you could never see your mother.” Joan was silent again.

  “How do you know she listens?” he asked finally. “She is only a stone figure, and stone figures don’t listen.”

  Bernat held his breath.

  “If it’s true they don’t listen,” Arnau responded, “why does everyone talk to them? Even Father Albert. You’ve seen him. Do you think Father Albert is making a mistake?”

  “She isn’t Father Albert’s mother,” the other boy insisted. “He’s already told me he has one. How will I know if the Virgin wants to be my mother if she doesn’t speak to me?”

  “She’ll tell you at night when you sleep, and through the birds.”

  “The birds?”

  “Well,” said Arnau hesitantly. The truth was he had never really understood what the birds were meant to do, but he had never dared tell his father so. “That’s more complicated. My ... our father will explain it to you.”

  Bernat felt a lump in his throat. Silence filled the room again, until Joan spoke once more: “Arnau, could we go right now and ask the Virgin?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now, my son, now. He needs it,” thought Bernat.

  “Please.”

  “You know it’s forbidden to go into the church at night. Father Albert—”

  “We won’t make any noise. Nobody will find out. Please!”

  Arnau gave in. The two boys stole out of the house and ran the short distance to Santa Maria de la Mar.

  Bernat curled up on the mattress. What could possibly happen to them? Everyone in the church loved them.

  Moonlight played over the outlines of the scaffolding, the half-built walls, the buttresses, arches, and apses ... Santa Maria lay silent, with only the occasional flames from bonfires showing there were watchmen in the vicinity. Arnau and Joan sneaked round the church to Calle del Born; the main entrance to the church was closed, and the side by the Las Moreres cemetery, where much of the building material was kept, was the most closely guarded. But on the side where the new work was being carried out there was only one fire. It was not hard to get in: the walls and buttresses led down from the apse to the Born doorway, where a wooden board marked the site of the new steps into the church. The two boys walked over the chalk lines drawn by Master Montagut, showing the exact position for the new door and steps, and entered Santa Maria. They headed silently toward the Jesus chapel in the ambulatory. There, behind strong and wonderfully wrought-iron railings, they found the Virgin, lit as ever by the candles that the bastaixos made sure never went out.

  They crossed themselves: “That’s what you should always do when you come into church,” Father Albert had told them. They grasped the iron bars of the chapel.

  “He wants you to be his mother,” Arnau said silently to the Virgin. “His mother has died, and I don’t mind sharing you.”

  Clinging to the bars, Joan stared in turn at the Virgin and at Arnau.

  “What?” Arnau asked.

  “Be quiet!”

  “Father says he must have suffered a lot. His mother was imprisoned, you see. She could only reach her arm out through a window, and he couldn’t see her. Not until she had died, but even then he says he didn’t really look at her because she had forbidden him to.”

  The smoke rising from the pure beeswax candles in the rack below the statue clouded Arnau’s sight once more, and the lips of the Virgin smiled at him.

  “She will be your mother,” he declared to Joan.

  “How do you know, if you say she replies through—”

  “I know, and that’s all there is to it,” Arnau cut in.

  “What if I asked her—”

  “No,” said Arnau, interrupting him again.

  Joan stared at the stone figure: how he wanted to be able to talk to her the way Arnau did! Why did she listen to his brother and not to him? How could Arnau know ... ? Joan was promising himself that one day he would be worthy of her talking to him, when they heard a noise.

  “Shhh!” Arnau whispered, looking toward the empty Las Moreres doorway.

  “Who goes there?” A lantern appeared in the doorway.

  Arnau started to run toward the Calle del Born, where they had got into the church, but Joan stood rooted to the spot, staring at the light that was now coming along the ambulatory.

  “Let’s go!” said Arnau, tugging at him.

  When they looked out at the Calle del Born, they saw more lanterns heading toward them. Arnau looked back; there were more lights inside the church too.

  There was no way out. The watchmen were talking and shouting to one another. What could the boys do? The wooden floor! He pushed Joan down. The planks did not quite reach the wall. He pushed Joan down again, until the two of them were in the church foundations. The lights reached the platform above them. The footsteps on the wooden boards echoed in Arnau’s ears, and the watchmen’s voices hid the sound of his wildly beating heart.

  They waited while the watchmen searched the building. It took them a lifetime! Arnau peered upward, trying to work out what was going on. Each time he saw light filtering through the boards, he crouched down to hide still farther in.

  In the end the watchmen completed their search. Two of them stood on the wooden boards and for a few moments shone their lanterns all round. How could they possibly not hear the beating of his or Joan’s heart? The men moved away. Arnau turned his head to look at the spot where his brother had been crouching. One of the watchmen placed a lamp by the wooden planks; the other one was already walking away. Joan was not there! Where could he have got to? Arnau went over to where the church foundations joined the wooden floor. There was a hole, a small underground passage through the foundations of the church.

  When Arnau had pushed him down into the foundations, Joan had crawled under the wooden floor. He found nothing in his way, so he went on crawling along the passageway, which angled slowly down toward the main altar. Arnau had encouraged him onward, whispering, “Be quiet,” several times. The noise of his body scraping against the sides of the tunnel prevented him from hearing anything more, but he was sure Arnau was right behind him: he could hear him clambering under the floor. It was only once the tunnel broadened out, allowing him to turn round and get to his knees, that Joan realized he was all alone. Where was he? It was completely dark.

  “Arnau?” he called out.

  His voice echoed round him. It was ... it was like a cave. Beneath the church!

  He called out again and again. Quietly at first, then much louder, but he was frightened by the sound of his own shouts. He could try to get back, but where was the mouth of the tunnel? Joan stretched out his arms, but could feel nothing: he had crawled too far.

  “Arnau!” he shouted again.

  Nothing. He began to cry. What might he find in the cave? Monsters? What if this was hell? He was underneath a c
hurch; didn’t they say that hell was down there somewhere? What if the Devil appeared?

  Arnau meanwhile was crawling down the passage. That was the only place Joan could have gone. He would never have climbed back out from under the floor. Arnau struggled on for a few yards, then called out once more. No one would hear outside the tunnel. No reply. He crawled on.

  “Joanet!” he shouted, then corrected himself. “Joan!”

  “Here,” he heard the reply.

  “Where is here?”

  “At the end of the tunnel.”

  “Are you all right?”

  Joan stopped shaking. “Yes.”

  “Come back then.”

  “I can’t. This is like a cave, and I can’t find the way back.”

  “Feel the walls until you ... No!” Arnau changed his mind. “Don’t do that, Joan, do you hear me? There might be other tunnels. If only I could reach you ... Can you see anything, Joan?”

  “No,” the other boy replied.

  Arnau could crawl on until he found him, but what if he got lost too? Why was there a cave down there? Ah, now he had an idea! He needed light. If they had a lamp, they could find their way back.

  “Wait where you are! Do you hear me, Joan? Stay still, all right? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, I can. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to get a lamp and come back. Stay where you are and don’t move, promise?”

  “Yes ... ,” said Joan reluctantly.

  “Think that you are underneath your mother, the Virgin.” Arnau did not hear any reply. “Did you hear me, Joan?”

  Of course he heard him. He had said, “Your mother.” Arnau could hear her, even if he could not. But he had not let him talk to her. What if Arnau did not want to share his mother, and had deliberately shut him up down there, in hell?

  “Joan?” Arnau insisted.

  “What is it?”

  “Wait for me, and don’t move.”

  With difficulty, Arnau managed to crawl back until he was under the boards by the Calle del Born entrance. He quickly snatched the lamp that the watchman had left there, then disappeared into the tunnel again.

  Joan could see the light approaching. When the walls opened out, Arnau took his hand away from the lantern to give more light. His brother was kneeling a couple of yards from the mouth of the passageway.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Arnau said, trying to calm him.

  He raised the lamp, and the flame rose higher. Where were they ... ? It was a cemetery! They were in a cemetery. A tiny cave that for some reason had survived beneath Santa Maria like an air bubble. The roof was so low they could not stand up. Arnau looked over at several huge amphorae. They looked just like the jars he was used to seeing in Grau’s workshop, but more rounded. Some of them were broken, showing the skeletons inside, but others were still intact: big clay vessels cut in half, stacked together, and sealed at the top.

  Joan was still shaking: he was staring straight at a skeleton.

  “It’s all right,” Arnau insisted, going over to him.

  Joan drew away from him.

  “What is—” Arnau started to ask.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Joan, interrupting him.

  Without waiting for a reply, he plunged into the tunnel. Arnau followed, and when they reached the boards at the entrance, he blew out the lamp. There was no one in sight. He put the lantern back where he had found it, and they returned to Pere’s house.

  “Don’t say a word of this to anyone,” he warned Joan on the way. “Agreed?”

  Joan said nothing.

  14

  EVER SINCE ARNAU had told him that the Virgin was his mother too, Joan ran to the church whenever he had a free moment. He would cling to the grille of the Jesus chapel, push his head in between them, and stare at the stone figure with the child on her shoulder and boat at her feet.

  “One of these days you won’t be able to get your head out,” Father Albert said to him once.

  Joan pulled back and smiled at him. The priest ruffled his hair and knelt down beside him.

  “Do you love her?” he asked, pointing inside the chapel.

  Joan hesitated.

  “She’s my mother now,” he replied, more as a wish than a certainty.

  Father Albert was choked with emotion. How much he could tell the little boy about Our Lady! He tried to speak, but the words would not come. He put his arm round Joan’s shoulders until he could safely speak again.

  “Do you pray to her?” he asked when he had recovered.

  “No. I just talk to her.” Father Albert looked inquisitively at him. “Well, I tell her what’s been happening to me.”

  The priest looked at the Virgin.

  “Carry on, my son, carry on,” he said, leaving him at the chapel.

  IT WAS NOT hard. Father Albert considered three or four possible candidates, and finally settled on a rich silversmith. During his last annual confession, the craftsman had seemed very contrite about several adulterous affairs he had been involved in.

  “If you really are his mother,” Father Albert muttered, raising his eyes to the heavens, “you won’t hold this little subterfuge against me, will you?”

  The silversmith could not say no.

  “It’s only a small donation to the cathedral school,” the priest told him. “It will help a child, and God ... God will thank you for it.”

  Now all that was left was to speak to Bernat. Father Albert went to find him.

  “I’ve managed to get a place for Joanet at the cathedral school,” he told him as they walked along the beach near Pere’s house.

  Bernat turned to look at him.

  “I don’t have the money for that,” he said apologetically.

  “It won’t cost you anything.”

  “But I thought that schools ...”

  “Yes, but those are the public ones in the city. For the cathedral school, it’s enough ...” What was the point explaining the details? “Well, I’ve seen to that.” The two men continued walking. “He will learn to read and write, first from hornbooks and then from psalms and prayers.” Why did Bernat not say anything? “Then when he is thirteen, he can start secondary school. There he will study Latin and the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetics, geometry, music, and astronomy—”

  “Father,” Bernat interrupted him, “Joanet helps out in the house, and because of that Pere does not charge me for his food. But if the boy goes to school ...”

  “He’ll be fed at school.” Bernat looked at him again, and shook his head slowly, as though thinking it over. “Besides,” the priest went on, “I’ve already spoken to Pere, and he’s agreed you should pay the same as now.”

  “You’ve done a lot for the boy.”

  “Yes, do you mind?” Bernat shook his head, smiling. “Just imagine if one day Joanet went to university, to the main center in Lérida, or even to somewhere abroad, like Bologna or Paris ...”

  Bernat burst out laughing.

  “If I refused, you’d be really disappointed, wouldn’t you?” Father Albert nodded. “He’s not my son, Father,” Bernat added. “If he were, I wouldn’t allow one boy to work for the other, but it’s not going to cost me anything, so why not? He deserves it. And perhaps one day he will go to all those places you mentioned.”

  “I’D PREFER TO be with the horses, like you,” Joanet told Arnau as they walked along the same part of the beach where Father Albert and Bernat had decided his future.

  “But it’s very hard work, Joanet ... Joan. All I do is clean and polish, and just when I’ve got everything gleaming, a horse gets taken out and I have to start all over again. That’s when Tomás doesn’t come in shouting and throwing a bridle or harness at me for me to see to. On the first day he cuffed me around the ear as well, but my father came in, and ... you should have seen him! He had a pitchfork, and pinned Tomás against the wall with it. The tines were pressing into his chest, so he started stammering and begging for forgiveness.
”

  “That’s why I’d like to be with you.”

  “Oh, no!” Arnau replied. “It’s true that he hasn’t laid a hand on me since then, but he always finds something wrong with what I do. He rubs dirt into things on purpose—I’ve seen him!”

  “Why don’t you tell Jesús?”

  “Father tells me not to. He says Jesus wouldn’t believe me, that Tomás is his friend, and so he would always take his side. Father says the baroness hates us and would use any argument against us. So you see, there you are learning lots of new things at school, while I have to put up with someone deliberately making things dirty and shouting at me.” They both fell silent for a while, kicking sand and staring out to sea. “Make the most of it, Joan,” Arnau said all of a sudden, repeating the words he had heard Bernat say.

  Joan was soon making the most of his classes. He took to them from the day the priest who taught them congratulated him in front of the whole class. Joan felt an agreeable tingling sensation as the other boys stared at him. If only his mother were still alive! He would immediately run and sit on the crate in the garden and tell her exactly what the priest had said: “the best,” he had called him, and all the others, all of them, had looked at him! He had never been the best at anything before!

  That evening, Joan walked home wreathed in a happy cloud. Pere and Mariona listened to him with contented smiles, asking him to repeat clearly phrases the boy thought he had already said, but had only gabbled incomprehensibly in his excitement. When Arnau and Bernat arrived, the three in the house looked toward the door. Joan made as if to rush over to them, but stopped when he caught sight of his brother’s face: it was obvious he had been crying. Bernat had a hand on his shoulder, and was holding him close.

  “What ... ?” asked Mariona, going up to Arnau to give him a hug.

  Bernat held her off with a gesture.

  “We have to put up with it,” he said, to no one in particular.

  Joan tried to catch his brother’s gaze, but he was looking at Mariona.

  They put up with it. The groom Tomás did not dare cross Bernat, but he took it out on Arnau.