by Norman Lewis
An hour passed before the cathedral’s peons arrived on their bicycles to haul back the great outer doors, and the notice ‘cerrado’ was hung on the inner ones. This was removed in another half-hour and we found ourselves in the almost barbaric splendour of the great building’s interior. This came almost within an ace of the most lavish of fairground attractions, but in the struggle for ecclesiastical advertisement, good taste was never abandoned.
A swelling crescendo—a thunder almost—of organ music filled the air. A thousand lights restored the concealed brilliance of innumerable dark corners. The cathedral had been perfumed, we were assured, by five hundred arum lilies, provided in weekly instalments by a manufacturer of railroad equipment, and the bill for a splendid music system and records of sacred music imported from Germany had been picked up by the best-known of the nation’s brewers of beer. We wandered past splendid statuary of the biblical martyrs and saints, and images of the three wise men gazed up at the star, twinkling in the ceiling, followed by them in their peregrination on Earth.
Later we were to compare the effect of this building upon each other. I was beginning to suspect the presence, in Eugene’s case, of a Sicilian ambivalence, notable in members of his family—his father included—who while describing themselves as atheists, subjected themselves, however reluctantly, to the power of the Christian Church. Despite himself, Eugene could be described as slightly carried away, and I had not failed to notice a telltale glistening of his eye as we passed through the cathedral’s doors.
There were tombs galore to be inspected, but an hour later after a careful examination of the inscriptions it had to be accepted that none bore the Corvaja name. We broached the problem with an attendant who recommended that we consult the registers. To be able to do this we would have to see the official in charge and an appointment was fixed with him for later in the day.
He proved very pleasant and eager to be helpful, although suffering from some visual impairment which caused him difficulty with the close print of the register.
‘We suffer,’ he said with a brief gesture at the vast interior, ‘from a chronic shortage of space, with the result that only the great monarchs of our past such as Don Alfonso El Sabio, and Don Pedro, known as The Cruel, have been given permanent resting places in the Tomb of the Kings. All those interred there in subsequent centuries have been, and will remain, permanently undisturbed.’ He slightly lowered his voice to assume a conciliatory tone. ‘National figures on a lesser historical scale—although, for example, famous in the literary and even financial world—might occupy a splendid sarcophagus for some twenty or thirty years. But due to what one might describe as competition for the space that remains vacant, the period of the occupation is constantly under revision. I should point out that it is not only the Corvaja family that has felt the effects of the situation.’
He took a paper from his satchel and ran his eyes over it. ‘According to this report,’ he said, ‘the Corvajas were only confirmed as in possession of the place originally allotted for a quarter of a century, and this expired some two years ago. Several letters were sent to them, but no reply has been received to date.’
‘So what has happened?’ Eugene asked, and the registrar crooked his finger.
‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘I will show you.’
We followed him as he shuffled across the nave towards a small door in the wall which he opened for brilliant sunshine to shaft through and, crossing the threshold, we found ourselves in a narrow unmade-up road running parallel with the cathedral wall. On the far side of the road a vast dry ditch contained a mountainous assortment of litter. The background to this scene was a high straggling hedge, and beyond that a seemingly empty field. We walked to the edge of the ditch for a closer inspection of its contents. These appeared for the most part to be fragments of tombstones, mixed with discarded articles of ecclesiastical furniture, some with a hardly spoiled finish, others cracked and stained or blackened by a long exposure to the elements. ‘This,’ said the registrar, ‘is the temporary repository of tombs we have been obliged to remove.’
‘Would there be any hope,’ I asked, ‘of unearthing an inscription, or even part of the inscription, from the Corvaja tomb?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Very little I’m afraid. Even if the fragments survived they are likely to be under a great weight of subsequent additions. The cathedral would do all it could to help you in your efforts but would not wish to arouse impossible hopes. There have been several attempts to recover family inscriptions but none, to the best of my knowledge, have been successful. We must remember that some tombs are now buried under tons of shattered stone and portions of them in some cases are likely to have been reduced to powder. Special machinery would be required at considerable cost to deal with the situation, and I believe in this case one should avoid holding out impossible hopes.’
I shook my head. ‘That being so,’ Eugene said, ‘there’s really nothing more to be done.’
‘You could of course apply for government aid,’ said the registrar. ‘My feeling is that they would be sympathetic, and surely it would be worth a try. There is perhaps one drawback. The time factor. The officials involved are notoriously slow to act in such cases and might take a considerable time to reach a decision. There would certainly be a delay.’
‘Of months I suppose,’ I said.
He shook his head and his expression had been changed by a slow, conciliatory smile.
‘No, years,’ he said.
We bowed to each other and, still smiling, the registrar backed away, turned and made for the small door in the wall. I caught Eugene in a sigh. ‘Not exactly the sweet taste of success,’ he said, and once again his eyes glistened.
‘Not exactly. All the same Ernesto will know we’ve done what we could for him. For all his bluster he’s a philosopher at heart. A bit of a disappointment. That’s all.’
Softly, through the closed door, we heard the organ begin what might have been the music of one of the psalms, and I believed it was even the psalm calling upon the believer to cast away doubt. So the tomb had now become part of the territory of legends. What of the old palace, I wondered. Doubtless, that too would have gone. But then again, perhaps it had not—and if any part of it was still there I could imagine Ernesto’s joy to be sent a photograph.
We called in at a tourist office to enquire and were assured that the once-called palace would be found in one of the side-streets off the Calle Sierpes—celebrated for its serpentine wanderings among the cramped buildings of old Seville. Once in the Sierpes itself we were given more precise directions. ‘It’s the big shoe shop just down the road,’ said our informant. We went there and spoke to the owner who made it clear that his shop was not just big, but the biggest in the province—stocking, he said, two thousand pairs of shoes.
He was a young man of great charm, who having listened to the history of our misfortunes, immediately invited us to lunch. A narrow door opened onto a stairway spiralling up what was clearly a medieval turret in which we were to discover that a modern room had been built, and in this the meal was served. It was part of a process of renovation by which most of the palace’s medieval interior had been replaced, and the new owners had benefited above all in matters of air and light. They had also been able to create, as he said, more useful space, in which stock previously stored elsewhere—amounting to roughly one thousand, five hundred pairs of shoes—could now be kept on the premises saving rental and insurance costs.
We congratulated him. What else could we do? He was a very hospitable man, and we told him how much we had enjoyed our meeting and listening to his account of the fortunes of the shoe business, and then took our leave.
‘What on earth are we going to say to Ernesto?’ Eugene asked.
‘Tell him the truth,’ I said. ‘Well, more or less.’
We rang London and left a message. Ernesto came through a few minutes later. Curiously enough, his voice was clearer and his slightly broken English mo
re comprehensible than in an ordinary conversation, as if an instrument held in his hand in some way helped to clarify and reorganise his thoughts.
‘So how was the cathedral?’ he asked.
‘Marvellous,’ I told him. ‘I suppose you’d say a bit disorganised. They were getting ready for a big celebration. Everything was upside down.’
‘You saw the tomb?’
‘The whole area was closed off. We’ll probably go back today. You’ll be interested to hear we managed to see something of the old palace. Inevitably it had been left to run down.’
‘They told me that,’ Ernesto said.
‘The Council seems to have a hand in a restoration of sorts, and a private interest was brought in.’
‘It’s no more than I expected,’ Ernesto said. ‘Municipalities don’t throw money away on run-down palaces. What have they done to it?’
‘It’s been turned into a store.’
‘What does it sell? Works of art, like most of the others?’
‘This one sells shoes,’ I told him. ‘They call it Super Shoe—the biggest store of its kind in the province—or so they say. A Council member praised it in a speech the other day. He said it had contributed to the prosperity of Seville.’
‘Has the medieval part of the building been left alone?’
‘Apparently that couldn’t be done. Two thousand pairs of shoes had to find a home.’
‘Does anything remain of the old place as it was?’ Ernesto asked.
‘Only the central turret. It is used for board-meetings. The Municipality agreed to the original windows being replaced by stained glass.’
‘Vulgar as ever,’ Ernesto said.
CHAPTER 16
AT THIS POINT IN our journey both Eugene and I seemed to be suffering from a stealthy onset of fatigue induced, we suspected, by the long walk to Zaragoza, followed by the over-stimulations and disappointments of the great city. Nevertheless, far from any waning in Eugene’s enthusiasm for the socialist cause, he was prepared to throw himself once again into the struggle for justice and had become a leader in a movement calling itself Ayuda. The organisation provided assistance to foreigners in trouble with the police, particularly adventurous young men. All too many of them were prepared to exploit the generosity of the local people, reminding a correspondent of the newspaper El Liberal of the sturdy beggars of the Middle Ages. These new-style villains snatched handbags, dealt in forged banknotes, and had even kidnapped a few affluent citizens and held them successfully for ransom. Ayuda denounced juvenile offenders to the police, but only in recognition of a bargaining system by which the severity of police action taken against them was correspondingly reduced.
Eugene’s mistake was to describe these activities with pride in a letter to his father. This produced nothing but alarm and, in the hope of resuming parental control, Ernesto took the first train to Seville, arriving two days later.
Ernesto had always claimed to have been something of a socialist himself, although, as he agreed, he was out of touch with socialism’s more scientific modern form. Priming himself with a quick scan through a copy of the Daily Worker, and with the intention of ensuring a sympathetic reception, he presented himself at the barrier of the Seville railway station with a red rosette in his lapel and his fist raised in a communist salute. The ticket collector alerted a Civil Guard lurking nearby, and Ernesto found himself under arrest. A brief questioning followed before he was released with an exchange of apologies and smiles and the police delivered him to our hotel.
We had received no warning that Ernesto was on his way, and it was therefore to our amazement that while loitering in a somewhat dishevelled lane we should suddenly be confronted by this amazing old Sicilian, dressed as he might have been for a stroll in the Strada Duca di Urbino, Palermo, with his somewhat outdated spats, eye-shade and a malacca cane with which he swiped off the tops of weeds. A bowler hat completed his costume. This, we were later assured, was not the hat in which the entrails of his friend had been collected on the occasion of the perilous duel, but a recent replacement.
The Sacramento Hotel benefited from the foresight of its owners in arranging its construction roughly within three hundred yards of the cathedral of which, from a slight eminence, it provided an exceptional view. In addition it offered special full-board rates to pilgrims, most of whom were notoriously short of cash.
It turned out that Ernesto had been a regular guest of the hotel. ‘It’s a place where you live in the past,’ he said, insisting that we should make the climb up to the nineteenth-century verandah. ‘You can’t match the view. Nothing’s been touched here for a hundred years. The only reason they leave things alone is because they can’t afford to do otherwise.’ The great feature of the view was inevitably the majestic profile of the cathedral, and an elegantly scripted notice supplied a list of the features of one of the three greatest churches in the Christian world.
Mention was also made of the entombment here of Spain’s most terrible kings, including Don Pedro the Cruel, who lay almost side by side with the most famous citizen in the nation’s history, Christopher Columbus. In the subsequent contest for burial space purchase prices were based on the affordable proximity to one or other of these magnificent sepulchres, a pseudo-magical power being believed to leak into the surrounding tombs. Ernesto told us of a prosperous tallow-candle merchant of his acquaintance who spent thirty years of his life writing an account of the religious problems leading to the Seven Years War. His remains had subsequently been accommodated in the much sought-after Don Pedro area. No space, he said, would have been available at any price in the Columbus zone for a half-century.
There could have been no better day for gazing at the view of the cathedral from the hotel verandah, for suddenly, in the mid-afternoon, and without the slightest warning, a south wind from the Gulf swept an immense number of sea birds into the sky, and one of these, identified by Eugene as a pelican, had alighted on a finial of the Giralda tower.
The extraordinary presence of this large and somewhat unwieldy bird, known only as a native of the Gulf of Cadiz, perched on the topmost point of the highest building in this part of Spain, appeared even to Ernesto as a phenomenon devoid of rational explanation. Although an abstemious man who did his best to keep his wits about him when faced with puzzles familiar in southern climes, he was driven on this occasion to steady his thinking with the aid of a glass of potent local wine. Later in the day, explanations were forthcoming. The pelican, said an early edition of the ABC, was constantly mistaking the green enamel sprayed over the wrought iron, often employed on the facades of government buildings, for edible foliage. The small crowds who gathered in the cathedral square watched the spectacle with amazement and then derision until the bird was finally blown away by strong winds. For some, however, the bird’s presence was immediately accepted as a possibly dangerous omen and the more superstitious peasants in the vicinity burnt offerings in their houses.
The incident prompted discussion regarding the purpose of our own visit. The question Ernesto now asked himself was whether the Corvajas’ pilgrimages to Spain were any more rational than a pelican’s flight from the swamps? Had not the time come for normal human beings to reject the servilities inherited from the past? Was it not pride in its most absurd form to be able to claim that one’s grandfather’s tomb was a few metres from the sarcophagus of Pedro the Cruel? Now even that doubtful privilege was not the case.
‘Do we have to bother about these things?’ Eugene wanted to know.
Of course we don’t,’ Ernesto said. ‘I think our pilgrimages should end and we’ll return to London.’
CHAPTER 17
IT MUST HAVE BEEN evident to Ernesto within minutes of his happy reunion with his son that only the softest and subtlest approach to the problem of persuading Eugene to return home to England was likely to prove successful. By no possible interpretation of the word socialism could it have been alleged that Ernesto was in the slightest concerned with bettering the condition
of the poor, or the problems of those in trouble with the law. Nevertheless his appreciation of the troubles involved at times of financial crisis in general was vast and varied. Was this an occasion when the power of money could be put to better use than it so often was?
Ayuda’s survival was dependent on successful financing and Ernesto was convinced that what otherwise threatened to become a family problem could almost certainly be handled with the aid of a gambling syndicate with whom he had conducted mutually satisfactory business in the past.
‘You talk of raising money, Father,’ Eugene said, ‘but how? You mean here? In Seville?’
‘Absolutely not,’ Ernesto told him. ‘They don’t go in for charity here. Surely you know that. Only the priests get fat. To get a charity going of the kind you have in mind you’d have to do it from England. I could talk to a friend in one of the gambling syndicates who’d probably help.’
‘And you think there’s some hope they’ll agree?’
‘I think we might be able to put together some sort of a case. I’ve helped them out once or twice and they’d probably lend a friendly ear to what I had to say.’
‘That would be great.’
‘Here you’re a foreigner,’ Ernesto emphasised. ‘They don’t understand the workings of your mind, and therefore they mistrust you. The project as you have described it could go down fairly well back in England just because it’s the kind of exotic, slightly romantic thing that appeals to people who on the whole live dull lives.’
Soon after Ernesto’s arrival, I began to detect a mild attack of nerves spreading through the city. Within twenty-four hours of the first whispers of the words ‘Civil War’, people began preparing for the worst. Hawkers appeared on the streets selling first-aid kits containing bandages, ointments and a miscellany of surgical odds and ends. These included crutches and even a recent invention in the form of a small tool with antiseptic cream in its handle supposedly useful in emergency extractions of bullets. In a matter of days calendars had appeared in the street markets printed with double the usual number of non-auspicious days. Regular fortune-tellers operating in the markets had switched from small-scale personal happenings to prophecies concerned with the coming war.
