Iberia (124 page)

 

I look back upon the time spent with the Condesa de Peña
Ramiro as one of the most gracious experiences I was to know in
Spain. The woman was so simple in her manner, yet so profound
in her concern about the things that interested me, that to share
her information was a privilege. On her dining-room wall hung
a portrait of King Alfonso XIII inscribed to the conde; in a corner
stood the framed commission of an uncle who had governed the
Philippines; old photographs told of old glories that had come to
the distinguished family in the nineteenth century, but it was not
a family which lived in the past, for the conversation was alive
with present references, and I wondered how the conde and his
condesa managed this. At the end of our long discussion I asked
the condesa, ‘From what part of Spain do you come?’
‘From Galicia, of course.’

 

Then her unusual quality became explicable; she was one of
those granite-hard Galicians whom I like so much. She came from
the part of Spain I was about to enter, a part I had remembered,
in absence, as one of the best segments of the Spanish scene; and
she was an ideal representative of that region.

 

But before I reached Galicia I was required to follow the final
agony of Sir John Moore’s collapsing army as it left Villafranca
to try to reach the evacuation ships waiting at La Coruña,
forerunners of those later ships that would wait for another
defeated British army a hundred and thirty-one years later at
Dunkirk.

 

It was in their approach to Cebrero, the highest point on the
old pilgrims’ route and surely the most desolate, that the British
army suffered its Gehenna. All through the preceding year the
army had been pleading with both the English and Spanish
governments for money to speed the war, and at last they had got
some, but now on the dreadful cliff-lined pass to Cebrero the
paymasters had to back their wagons to the edge of the precipice
and throw away their funds, a hundred and twenty-five thousand
dollars in gold coins, too heavy to carry any longer, and starving
foot soldiers had to listen impotently as the worthless gold clinked
down the mountainside. It was January, 1809, the coldest part of
the winter, and men froze to death in the heavy snow. Women
died of starvation and their bodies lay covered with ice beside the
road. Horses had to be killed by the hundreds; to save ammunition
they were herded to some precipice and forced to jump to their
own screaming deaths. At every Spanish village, houses were
looted and soldiers would lie down in the ditch, a bottle of wine
to their lips, knowing that if they got drunk they would not rise
again, but they drank on and hundreds made the noiseless
transition from drunkenness to death.

 

Now, as I stood in this miserable pass, a summer sun radiated
from the rocks where low shrubs flowered and it was difficult to
visualize the vast debacle that had overwhelmed the British army,
one of the worst in its history, but I did take a perverse pleasure
from the fact that it was under these circumstances that my hero,
Sir John Moore, did finally bring his rebellious troops under
control, did lead them on to La Coruña, did stand off a constant
series of attacks by Soult, did preserve his men for embarkation
upon the ships as planned, and did save for General Wellington’s
later use in Spain a hardened cadre of men and officers who would
ultimately whip both Soult and Napoleon. He, of course, was
dead before even the embarkation took place, killed on the field
of battle by a French cannonball which carried away most of his
left shoulder, exposing the heart and lung. He had lost eight
thousand men and himself, but he had saved what he had set out
to save: the mobility of the British Army.

 

During one of my earlier pilgrimages to Santiago I had traversed
Cebrero pass in the snow of winter and had experienced some of
the misery that had afflicted pilgrims who passed this way. It was
night and I was accompanied by Don Luis, who had said, ‘It’s
dark and it’s snowing but I’m sure you’ll want to see the amazing
village perched up there. I doubt if it could be equaled in all
Europe.’ We left our car at the highest point of the pass and
climbed on foot a rather steep hill, at the top of which I saw two
flickering lights glimmering through the snow, and it required
no imagination on my part to see myself a pilgrim struggling to
find a night’s lodging. We came upon an extraordinary village, a
hilltop cluster of very low thatch-roofed houses unmodified since
the days of the earliest Celts. Open fires burned in the middle of
the floor and no chimneys allowed the smoke to escape. Wind
howled over the place all winter and clouds obscured it much of
the time, as they did now. It is maintained in the midst of modern
Spain as a memorial to the manner in which hill Spaniards used
to live, a huddle of eight or ten houses centering about a low,
rugged stone sanctuary which looked in the darkness of night as
if it had been built of pinkish stone without the use of mortar. It
was unoccupied and unutterably lonely, a rough thing that must
have dated far back before the beginning of Romanesque or
Gothic. Possibly it was of Celtic origin.

 

At any rate, in this rude spot I somehow lost Don Luis, and in
the snow I spent the better part of a half-hour shouting, ‘Halooo,
Don Luis!’ but I could find neither him nor the footpath leading
down to our car. So there I was, as many a pilgrim must have
been in the old days, lost on the mountain that had destroyed an
army and had caused the despair of millions of pilgrims. It was
really a rather bad experience, for the low houses, with no lights
or chimneys showing sparks, hid from me and I wandered back
and forth in the stormy darkness.

 

An old shepherd finally heard me and showed me how to open
the door of the desolate sanctuary, and there I waited in the dank
night till Don Luis should find me. I was standing in shadowy
darkness, for there was only one candle guttering behind a pillar,
when I heard the shepherd speak from his share of the darkness.
He had white hair which showed beneath his cap, and no teeth,
but he told a strange story of Cebrero.

 

‘It was during a winter like this,’ he said, ‘with wind and storm
and snow and frozen sheep. A monk was left here to say Holy
Mass for any pilgrims who appeared at the sanctuary, but no one
ever came except an old shepherd like me. Juan Santín his name,
and each day in the storm he would present himself before this
altar to hear Mass, so the grudging monk would have to leave his
fire and come to this cold place to celebrate the mystery.

 

‘One special night, when the storm was worse than ever before,
the monk aspired to stay by his fire, but Juan Santín appeared for
evening Mass. It was his only pleasure in life besides caring for
his sheep, so the grumbling monk had to leave his fire once more.
“Poor me, persecuted me! That I should be driven through the
storm just because this idiot of a shepherd comes to hear how I
pronounce a few words of Latin before this bit of bread and drop
of wine.”

 

‘And as he spoke, a clap of thunder roared through the storm,
and a great flash of light filled this sanctuary, and on that altar
the bread turned into the Body of Christ itself, and the wine in
that very chalice which you see tonight, became His blood. And
the voice of Jesus Christ said to the monk, ‘I too have come to
hear Mass said this night, for I too am a shepherd.”’

 

The miracle of Cebrero echoed through Spain and France and
the shrine became one of the most sacred on the Way of St. James.
Queen Isabel was especially moved by it and donated some of the
treasures to be seen here now; to me as a writer the old man’s
story had special meaning, because of all the pilgrim legends told
along this road, this seemed the one that applied most closely to
the life of the artist. Just as the grumbling monk read his Mass
day after day, practically alone, never knowing when he would
entertain an audience, so the beginning writer sits alone through
many months putting down words which he himself doubts the
meaning of, and he wonders if anyone will ever bother to read
them. Then, long after they are finished and even forgotten, he
may receive a letter from a strange part of the world saying,
‘Tonight I was in the sanctuary of Cebrero as I read your words.’

 

Don Luis finally found me and led me back to the car. In storm
we crossed the lonely hills of Galicia and at midnight came to that
last small rivulet separating us from Compostela. Here in past
centuries guards had been posted to ensure that all pilgrims
disrobed for an obligatory bath. Priests claimed, ‘It’s to clean
ourselves before we kneel before St. James.’ But wise men knew
it was to wash away the lice.

 

As we climbed the hill beyond the rivulet I knew that from the
next high spot the lights of Compostela would be seen, but I was
not prepared for what Don Luis did as we rode through the night.
‘Mountjoy!’ he suddenly cried. ‘I am king.’ He had revived the
most ancient rule of the pilgrims’ road, that whoever should first
spy the towers of the cathedral would call out in French, ‘Mon
Joie,’ and he would be recognized as king of that group. It is
amusing to think that most people in the world with family names
like King, König, Leroy or Rex obtained their names because some
keen-eyed forebear had been first in his pack to see Compostela.

 

In the summer of 1966 I was in the city only a few minutes
before I received a phone call from a valued friend, Father Jesús
Precedo Lafuente, a youngish priest then serving as canon of the
cathedral and a man of whom much was expected in the future.
He had started his studies at Rome with the Gregorians and had
finished them in Jerusalem with the Franciscans. He was a Galician
from La Coruña and the best kind of clerical intellectual in that
he wrote with professional skill and argued with facility on all
matters regarding the Church. As he spoke on the phone I could
visualize him as I had last seen him: late thirties, a dark handsome
man with Galician features and a disarming smile, the kind of
priest on whom the Church in Spain has been depending more
and more in recent years.

 

His message characterized the man. ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday, and
I know you aren’t Catholic. This being the shrine of Spain, it’s
understandable that we have no Protestant church here for you
to attend, but there’s a good one not far away, and if you’d like,
I’ll send a car around for you in the morning.’

 

I replied, ‘From the canon of the cathedral, that’s more than
generous and I appreciate it, but I’d rather spend the time
revisiting the cathedral with you.’ So early the next morning we
set out together to explore again one of Spain’s most sacred
monuments, and much of what I have to report about Compostela
comes from what Father Precedo has said or written about his
cathedral.

 

It is unique in Spain in that it can be seen from four different
sides, each set off by its own plaza, all of which are architectural
treasures. At first glance, of course, it is the western façade that
dominates, not only because it is extremely ornate, topped by two
soaring and poetic towers, but also because the plaza in front is
the second finest in Spain, ranking only slightly behind that gem
in Salamanca. It is a huge plaza, and one night I saw many
thousands of people occupy it without crowding. Four handsome
buildings delineate it, each with its distinctive style of architecture,
so that poets have said that at night one can hear a whispered
colloquy among the architectural styles that have made Spain
beautiful: Romanesque at the religious college, plateresque at the
Hostal de los Reyes Católicos, eighteenth-century neoclassical in
the city hall, and the wildly ornate baroque of the cathedral.

 

If one were to see only the western façade of the cathedral he
would have to conclude that it was an eighteenth-century work,
built upon the site where a series of older churches had stood;
but move around to the southern façade and you will see what
might be called the true cathedral. The Plaza de las Platerías
(Silversmiths) is a delightful, closed-in, antique little square
dominated by the huge bell tower of the cathedral and by this
southern façade, which is a pure and stately Romanesque. I could
very happily devote much of my time to this beautiful wall, but
I have something even more compelling drawing me on, so I shall
merely say that to see the cathedral pretty much as it originally
was, one must come to this Plaza de las Platerías, where the statue
of an insouciant King David playing his fiddle on the left
doorjamb is a joyous work, probably the cathedral’s best-known
piece of sculpture.

 

The next plaza, the eastern, is my favorite, for from this vantage
point, especially from the top of the steps at the extreme right,
one can see the great cathedral to advantage. The plaza itself is
nothing more than a huge empty square hemmed in by the bleak
wall of a convent, some low arcades and the beautiful Romanesque
wall of the cathedral, into whose face has been let one of the finest
things in Compostela, the Puerta Santa (Holy Door), which is
opened only during the years of special pilgrimage and is a
sculptural masterpiece. The door is protected on each side by
twelve finely carved figures of apostles and prophets and along
the top by larger figures of St. Athanasius on the left, St. Theodore
on the right, and in the middle the best-known representation of
Santiago in pilgrim’s attire, with wide-brimmed hat, gourd and
cockleshell. When I think of Santiago, I think of this notable figure
carved in 1694 by the Portuguese artist Pedro do Campo. The
twenty-four figures which guard the Holy Door are active in the
life of Compostela. Who stole the widow’s cow? ‘One of the
twenty-four.’ Who ran off with the municipal funds? ‘One of the
twenty-four.’ Not long ago, when the university administered an
especially difficult examination, one of the students responded,
‘For the answer to this question you’ll have to consult the
twenty-four.’ And there they stand, twenty-four wonderful figures
from the Romanesque age, clothed in massive simplicity, topped
by the three plateresque figures of Pedro do Campo. For a dusty
pilgrim to have entered through this beautiful door to the
cathedral which had lured him on for nine hundred miles must
have been a culminating spiritual experience.