EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALMarch 31, 1999
Calle Conde de Barajas, Seville
Building Belief in the Palm of Her Hand: Holy Wednesday
It’s 2am and from a half-sleep, in the Conservatory’s
shuttered pitch-black, a distant pulse approaches. Suddenly, voices rise, and the rhythm
is fully audible. A sad, melodic horn, like an anesthetized pinball bounces through the
alleys and up towards a full moon. When the moon is full at Holy Week it is called Parasceve.
Between the facades, the night sky is a solid, free-form rectangle, like a Bishop’s
hat, and the Parasceve is a jewel at the centre.
Within minutes the alley is alive with the white noise chatter of the
devout, and a chorus of melancholy trumpets approaches startlingly, playing into
people’s bedrooms. The band is bawling. The sudden crowd is standing in the street,
collectively staring at an imminent scene. Their subject is blocked by the corner. In
minutes, the paso will make its turn from Jesus de Gran Poder onto Conde de
Barajas. The pocket of faces between the buildings illuminates. It glows orange and
flickering. Shushed.
Fernanda paces cold and hungry, in the last steps before the finish of
her six-hour penitence. Her thoughts are reminiscent, thinking of a time when the
brotherhoods admitted only men and boys. Tonight she walks anonymously cloaked and hooded,
barefoot with the others, tipping her toes to examine the black soles of her feet. It was
in the old parish churches, in the monasteries and the convents and the chapels where
Fernanda as a child first encountered images similar to the ones she now venerates and
protects in the procession. During the Holy Weeks of her childhood, Fernanda looked with
astonishment at the pain, the blood, the tears and the thorns, and breathed the incense as
a young spectator. She stood at the procession’s edge and collected wax drippings
from the penitents’ candles. By the end of the week she had built a multi-coloured
ball of wax the size of a grapefruit.
After the turn, the paso always stops. A turn is an important
scene in the procession’s drama. Crowds often applaud, in awe after a chance to
examine the decoration of the paso, or in praise of the smooth, difficult turn by
the costaleros. A turn is made with excruciatingly tiny shuffles. The feet are not
lifted from the cobblestone, only shifted a few degrees, like a secondhand, until the turn
is completed. From the day after Easter costaleros begin to practice these sorts of
moves for the following year, with pasos made of plywood, steel frames and
sandbags. The rocking, the pacing, the gliding and marching, and the turning are an
artform in Seville.
A small girl approaches Fernanda. "Quiera cera". In
her palm she holds a ball of wax. Fernanda tips her heavy, long candle over the
child’s palm. As the wax drips, it cools down enough not to burn, and dribbles in a
bumpy ribbon onto the ball. The girl concentrates on the stream of wax, rolling the ball
around in her hand. She smoothes the warm layer with her fingertips. The foreman of the paso
taps the front of the float three times. A command is given and the float
"leaps"—the carriers jump to an upright position suddenly, and with that,
the procession continues.
Drums beat, deafening. On the walls of the narrow street, the darkness
plays a game. The paso is preceded by its silhouette, giant and ominous. The wall
is golden, with huge, dark hooded figures undulating flat against its moldings. A
sentenced Christ walks in the wall, dwarfing, with exaggerated thorns.
All at once, from behind the curtain of the corner appears a density of
candles and incense so thick the paso is a blurry, floating apparition. The crowd
steps backward and the procession passes on its way home.
