The Low Voices

by Manuel Rivas

  The first time I met the figure of the Weatherman was when we were able to watch television in Leonor’s pub. This Mariano Medina – that was his name – seemed like a nice enough guy, I have no doubt. All the customers, who normally ignored the news, would be all ears whenever Medina appeared, his sobriety emphasised by thick glasses and the stick for indicating isobars. The weather maps back then were not in colour. Everything was either black or white. After a short discussion about high and low pressure, the pointer would invariably gravitate, with inclement insistence, towards Castro de Elviña and, more specifically, towards the roof of our house, in order to announce the approach of the Azores cyclone. This atmospheric phenomenon, with its boxer’s name, was always punctual. It would unleash seas of water that flooded everything – except for the well my father was digging.

  Spring arrived. The Weatherman withdrew his pointer for several days, and a better job turned up. My father was asked to build a small house for some neighbours, the Baleiros, a family who had emigrated to the north of England. When he returned to his work, next to the emergent Baleiro home, my father drew a circle early one morning and set about digging. First, with a hoe. It was black earth, good earth, that let itself be sifted. There then appeared a layer of muddy sand mixed with stones. It stuck to the pickaxe and was heavier to shovel. The day was sunny, and my father dug down with happy excitement, convinced that this time he wouldn’t be beaten by the void. It smelled of water. He could hear the murmurs. At dusk, the spring was already licking his boots. By nightfall, he came out of the well with festive splashing, water around his ankles. The well, on that first day, must have been about two metres, a little above his head.

  It hurt him, the way the well dried up. The way the spring made fun of him. One day, he brought along a water diviner. He called him ‘Mister Dowser’. The old man seemed very professional. He scoured the hillside with a thin stick that seemed to emerge from his fibrous hands like a strange eleventh finger he could roll and unroll. At one point, he stopped. He lowered his head, like someone hearing the first whimper of water, and the stick appeared to move, almost vibrating. But it was only a passing shiver. He repeated the operation with a pendulum, a chain from which he hung a cylindrical object with a conical point like a bullet. Nothing. It didn’t move anywhere in the garden. That stupid pendulum might have moved inside the house. The old man didn’t want to be paid. He really was a gentleman. There was a hydric sadness in his eyes. The spring remained silent, hiding somewhere. My father’s face stiffened that evening when the Weatherman appeared on the television in Leonor’s pub, with his infallible stick. The pointer, again, directly over our house.

  10

  The Celtic Treasure and the Astronaut

  IN RESTLESS PARADISE, we lived from one day to the next, but also in history. In the school account, history mimicked the flight of a bird of prey over the Castro henhouses. It turned up suddenly, as if it had come not from another place on earth, but from a forest rooted in the clouds. It then went into a helicoidal flight, a succession of perfect curves, until accurately pouncing with its claws on the target. The present – that was its prey. In the accounts of the low voices, the movement of history resembled the flight of a bat. There’s a bat that still flies on the dark side of my memory. Somebody found it in a granary, where it was sleeping its long winter sleep, hanging from a beam. We woke it up. We seized it by the tips of its wings. We tried to make it fly by throwing it against the light of a street lamp. The bat sluggishly moved its wings, tried to escape the nightmare, but fell down again. In the first act of unkindness, we found something comical about its face, with its human features. Until we became aware of the amazement in its blind look. Animals help us see. If there’s a flight I find fascinating, it is the flight of bats. It was a gift of guilt. The complete disarray, the unexpected twists and turns, the disruption of perspective, being visible and invisible at the same time. A total irony of the senses. Hallucinatory present.

  Unlike the historical chronology of school lessons, its heavy-machinery, unperturbed advance, in the accounts of the low voices tenses and episodes got mixed up. In appearance. As in the flight of a bat. As in the cubist print of a carnival. Near the ruins of the ancient indigenous settlement, on the best lands in Elviña Valley, expropriated by means of intimidation, they stuck a powerful factory for chemical fertilisers, Cross Fertiberia. The fruit trees soon fell ill, and the birds that used to alight on them disappeared. The Roman expedition by sea to quell the Artabrian rebels, the first Viking attack on the peninsula, the Battle of Elviña in 1809, the barbarities of 1936, all formed a succession of crazy acts that got mixed up in time. The large rock where Sir John Moore had his control post and was mortally wounded is popularly known as the Crag of Goliacho. Ana Filgueiras searched every nook and cranny in Castro for the root of this name. She wondered why it had to be Goliacho. And an old man replied with biblical precision, ‘That comes from the time David defeated Goliacho.’ Now, in the hallucinatory present, the contaminative factory had arrived. The wind scattered pollen, but also a futuristic plague. We grew up surrounded by an optimism about progress. When we came out of school, at midday, a plane would pass overhead on its way to Alvedro Airport, and we would greet it enthusiastically, running along, waving our arms about and shouting in the hope we might make ourselves heard, ‘Sweets, sweets!’ Some old people would mutter under their breath, ‘Beetles, more like. That’s what they’re going to throw down. Beetles!’ In summer, we would sometimes go down to Santa Cristina Beach, a merry band of boys and girls singing, ‘Tourist one million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine!’ And old Pego, who used to graze a tiny flock of depressed sheep, would murmur, ‘The winter will be here soon enough!’

  But there were still treasures to be found. Going in search of treasure didn’t seem such a stupid idea. If an old woman told us there was a golden beam from Os Curutos to O Lagar, for us children this wasn’t a story, but a piece of confidential information. The question was how to get hold of it. On the hill, Os Curutos, were the ruins of the city that put up a fight against the Romans. The teacher told us one day, in a serious voice, that we owed everything to the Roman Empire. But who were these earlier builders? They had an obsession with circles. They made circular houses with circular forts. Could they communicate? They probably said, ‘Boh!’ The ruins were fairly complete. A thick cobweb of undergrowth covered the three circular walls, the labyrinthine alleys and the mysterious cistern of the ancient settlement. They carried out an archaeological dig there from 1947 to 1952, and discovered the treasure of Castro de Elviña, which is kept in the museum of St Anthony’s Castle. It is said to have belonged to a priestess. One of the objects is the diadem with a clasp in the shape of a bird, a wonder of Celtic craftsmanship. I’ve often gazed long and hard at this golden palmiped. It seems to swim in the symmetry of ornate curves. It’s funny. The finest artistic heritage from our ancient Galician past is two feminine objects: the Castro diadem and the Caldas de Reis comb. Apparently, very few weapons turned up during the excavations. Who knows what significance this holds?

  So there we were, playing at hunting for treasure. Calmly. Most of all in Castro, but also in A Casa Vella and the woods of A Zapateira, where Soult’s French troops and Moore’s light infantry of Highlanders engaged. We carried farming implements and dug like that crazy Schliemann in search of Troy. That was all the metal we ever found – other rusty implements. Iron came face to face with its own ghost. The most extraordinary discoveries were the skeleton of a bike, a few cans of beer and some prehistoric condoms. But the treasure was there. We could feel the presence of the golden duck. We really could. Though what we heard was the constant hum, like a warning, of the high-voltage tower they decided in the years after the war to plant right on the ara solis of the most important castro along this coast. We were children playing, and yet, without knowing anything of history, we knew there was an element of symbolic fatality, of humiliation, in the brutal fact of h
aving stuck the tower in the heart of this ancient settlement. To warn of the risk, there was a sign with a drawing that showed a little man being zapped by a bolt of lightning. The electric hum inside our heads was very strong. Whenever a storm drew near, the sound would transmute into a grinding of teeth. There is a continual debate going on in Galicia as to whether the Celts were here or not. Not long ago, on the Portal Galego da Língua website, the debate about a Celtic presence was reignited due to an article by Fermín Bouza. Sparks were flying off the Internet. I had to exercise a great deal of self-control not to send a piece of confidential information that emanated from my childhood, which the others knew nothing about: ‘Stop scratching your heads. Stop turning the question around. The Galician Celts all died of electrocution!’

  Another historical place was A Casa Vella – also known as the Frenchman’s House – the ruins of an old ecclesiastical building that was badly affected by the cruelty of the Napoleonic battle on 16 January 1809. More or less around that date, in the same place, but in our times, the historical effect of the bat’s flight led to warlike skirmishes between the young people of Palavea-Cyprus and Castro. They were the ones who attacked, since they were more urban. The Castro lot took up defensive positions in the ruins, as always. There were people dressed up as Indians, cowboys, Romans, and even the odd Mexican in a mariachi hat. Whether we were Celtic or not, we clearly originated from the Far West, including those from Cyprus. A historical mix-up that normally ended up in a game of football, that more sophisticated form of war that requires the ideas to reach your feet.

  One of our local heroes was Ramón (Moncho) Tasende, who would become Spanish 5000-metre champion, but back then competed epically in cross-country races. And, before that, in cycling. He ran like an Ethiopian. His younger sister, Maruxa Tasende, was of the same stock. She was a great athlete, a long-distance runner. But the first time we saw her in action was with the women’s football team during carnival. The world was upside down. Never again did I see someone run and dribble down the wing as she did.

  Moncho Tasende never drank wine or beer, only Mirinda soft drinks or something like that, but the greatest spectacle, which we followed enviously, was watching him eat mounds of monkey nuts. He would pile them up into a pyramid on top of one of the barrels in Leonor’s pub. ‘It’s because of the fibre!’ he used to explain. And he was right. If one really were a writer, this is the menu one would have. Because what literature wants is fibre for cross-country running. In Castro, you had to be quick when it came to being born or dying. Even when deceased, you had to walk, since the cemetery was miles away, alongside St Vincent’s Church. There was a dirt track to Elviña – that was, until man landed on the moon, since it was just before the Apollo 11 landing in the summer of 1969 that the track got tarmacked. There was a lot of talk about astronauts back then, and the man who operated the tar gun, moving about Castro in a white suit with floating steps over the gravel, certainly looked as if he’d just come from a NASA space mission. Until he took off his helmet. It was very hot, something that was worsened by the sweating of the asphalt. His face was covered in the gelatinous glue of a jellyfish. Someone ran to offer him a jug of water. It took him a while to speak as he caught his breath, the words melting on his lips. Our astronaut finally explained that he’d been sent by the county council. And the work, for what it was, was not particularly well paid.

  11

  The Weight of the World on Their Heads

  SHE CARRIES A shape that is about her size, but gives the impression it’s heavier than she is. It’s not just any old shape. The washerwoman’s bundle is a perfect sphere. Resting on her head. Sometimes, there are several of them, in a caravan. Like the women carrying conical pyramids of a hundred lettuces each in their baskets.

  The topography of paths was largely a construction of women carrying essential things on their heads. In Castro de Elviña, old roads came together, like ‘The Mountaineers’, an old royal road, and cart tracks with names that evoked not just a destiny, but a way of walking. ‘Apparition’, for example, along which walked the living and the dead. ‘Goblin’. These deep pathways formed part of a loom on which the walker’s shuttle wove the known and unknown that could take you anywhere in Galicia. In addition to the main routes, throughout the whole territory, hill and dale, there was a palimpsest of writing on the ground, cryptic in appearance, but which always led to a place-in-waiting. My mother tells me, ‘Follow the path of the broody hen.’ And they really existed. The hen. The path. The nest. Or the road to Perfecto’s mill. That also existed. The mill. And Perfecto.

  My favourite was the overgrown road. The track to A Cavaxe. The old path that came from Mesoiro Valley and skirted the fort in Castro. Each path has its own imagination. Paths die whenever they stop telling stories. This path I’m talking about was overgrown for much of the year. It had fallen into disuse. Besides, we lived a long way from there, over on the other side. And yet my sight became entangled in it. I remember one day in winter, it was raining and a funeral procession appeared around the bend. This scene taken out of a film wasn’t entirely without reason. Mesoiro and Feáns belonged to the parish of St Vincent of Elviña, and they would often come on foot to bury their dead, bearing the coffin on their shoulders for several miles. The overgrown path opened that day to reveal the extreme gait of sadness. Moving in heavy, congested order, the black umbrellas raised like tarred shields against the leaden sky, the funeral procession advanced. What they were carrying was a small, white coffin. Whenever a child died, it was an angel dying. But I had the impression that day, I don’t know why, that God himself had died. Had got smaller. Had curled up inside a bluish-white coffin under the storm.

  I felt great respect towards that path to A Cavaxe. The way it opened and closed. It opened again, and there was the disturbing vision of some young lads from the other side of Orro, carrying a hunted wolf tied to a stretcher, the ghost of a wolfless wolf, a hide that death itself had abandoned. It may have been the last wolf, and they were the last wolf men. Even in the way they asked for coins, they demonstrated a lack of enthusiasm.

  One day, on the path to A Cavaxe, some acrobats turned up. It was around the time the Price Circus came to A Coruña, pulling in the crowds, with Pinito del Oro on the trapeze. But this small group of circus performers used to do the rounds of villages and suburbs. I don’t remember what they were called – we used to call them the Saltimbancos, which wasn’t a bad name. Their main acts were the Wise Donkey, the Invincible Man and the acrobatics of the Flying Girl. They performed two nights in Castro, in a field belonging to Felipe, a farmer who once paid us five pesetas for helping with the threshing and gave us the money in such a way that we wore it like a medal. Which just goes to show how important the manner of giving is. People really enjoyed the number with the donkey and the strongman, and other distractions, but not nearly so much as the acrobatic girl, who, as soon as she appeared on stage, with what for me was a death-defying leap, formed part of the Enigmatic Organisation of the Unforgettable. She was just a girl, but she grew before our very eyes. We watched her grow. She had very long hair gathered in a ponytail. This also responded to one of the senses. The final act was the Flying Girl. She climbed up onto the shoulders of the Invincible Man, tied a tall metal platform to him with a harness and, attaching her ponytail to the top of the pinnacle, gave herself a push and started turning and turning in the night. Without support, with only the mooring of her hair. There is, in the Enigmatic Organisation of the Unforgettable, a second image of the Flying Girl. It’s the following day, next to the Laranxeiro river, the washerwomen’s favourite. The Flying Girl is in a bathing suit. Washing her hair very slowly. She lies down in the sun, on the grass. Her hair covers half the field. What a lovely surprise for the grass.

  On Sundays, along the path to A Cavaxe, there appeared horses with riders dressed as mariachis. No, they hadn’t just come off a television or film set in order to start walking. Groups of Mexican musicians were famous back then. They would c
ome down from the mountains in Galicia as if they’d just arrived from Jalisco. Not anymore. The one arriving now is not on horseback. He’s a cyclist with his bike over his shoulder. I have always admired people who carry their bikes, rather than the other way round. In Castro, there were several such cyclists I hardly ever saw riding their bikes. They never pushed their bikes very hard. They would delicately place a hand on the handlebars, and in this way the two of them would lead each other along. A high degree of civilisation.

  Washerwomen by the Laranxeiro river

  Is that the undergrowth opening? Who’s coming along the path now? It’s another cyclist. This one is riding his bike. He’s certainly pedalling. His name is Maxi. He has a large roll on his back, and a brush with a handle, a kind of strange mast. Hanging on the handlebars is a bucket. He’s bringing the cinema posters. The closest ones to us are Portazgo Cinema in Burgo Estuary and Monelos Cinema at the city gates. He’s going to stick them to the billboard that hangs on the large wall of the Cardama estate, with its palm tree where all the sparrows from Elviña Valley congregate once a day. I always stop to have a look at the cinema posters and the palm tree. Only when the starlings arrive is it possible to see so many birds together. The palm tree tweets, chirps, chatters, warbles. It must be going mad with so many birds on its head.