The SARAPHINA MOSEY Guest Writers Anthology

More Notes from Iberia

By R. Genn

At Four O’clock in the Afternoon

It’s four o’clock in the afternoon in the plaza in Fuenteheridos. Siesta is just about over and the white-painted town is languid in the January sun. Two dogs chase each other in circles on the tiles under the orange trees. Four girls who have passed by several times, pass by again. They’re about fourteen years old and they seem bored. All afternoon an old man has walked between the Bar Ajeulo on one side to the Bar Federico on the other. There has not been enough time for him to have a drink in either. Each time he crosses and steps onto the plaza he looks around as if he’s expecting somebody.

At four o’clock in the afternoon a woman in a window above the panaderia calls out a prolonged and unclear remark in a high-pitched voice. The man does not stop or look toward her, but holds his hand in her direction as if to silence her. He moves to the corner of the plaza, staring down the narrow cobbled street as several young men with smokes dangling, call out and wave their arms from a Citroen which bounces through on its way to somewhere else.

Then another man enters the plaza leading a fancy-saddled white horse with a high step and a square cut tail. The horse has in tow a gray mule with a dark red blanket. The man who had been leading the animals now swings himself up and onto the mule. The four girls come over as if it’s a regularly tolerated nuisance, and without smiling or saying a word, help the old man onto the fancy horse. The woman calls out again and the girls continue their walk. Both bartenders come out from behind their plastic door-hangers, lean on their doors and watch the two mounted men, attached and in tandem, leave the plaza as the clock in the tower rings four o’clock in the afternoon.

The Girl in the Tower

There’s a legend told in the bars about a girl who lived for many years in an ancient castle. Her name was Serena de Jabugo and she had what we now call the condition of agoraphobia. She was afraid of people and crowds, and preferred her own company. She was unable to speak to or even look at people. Her father, a wealthy landowner, sent her to live in a tower where all she was able to see of the world was a few narrow views through vertical shot-holes.

Serena was remarkably happy in this restrictive environment, attending to her sewing and decorative stitch-work. One day a young man who was sent to hoist up her provisions took the liberty to come over the parapet and into her room. He was a very talkative fellow, the son of a local knight, and while Serena said hardly a word she was happy to listen. Soon she was wishing for his return.

A strange thing happened. On the day the young man visited, a pair of storks began to build a nest on a ruined tower that was part of the castle. Serena watched this with interest. On the day the first egg was hatched the young man returned for a second visit. Serena took this to be an indication that there was to be a change in her life, and she shyly invited the young man to visit her again.

Serena and the young man became lovers. She began to speak and smile and at times became quite animated. The storks returned year after year and had many families. The young man came again and again also. Then one day the storks did not return to the nest. Neither did the man, who had now grown old. Serena, who now spoke and wrote letters to people she did not know, lived on in the tower, and became quite famous.

A Visit to Fatima

Fatima is a Disneyland of the soul. Everybody participates. In the evening there’s a torchlight service in the vast open area called the "meeting place." A sparkling plasma of perhaps five thousand people moves slowly out from the Chapel of the Apparition and around the space spilling down and back again to the site where three peasant children first saw the Virgin Mary in 1911. An illuminated Virgin is carried aloft to the accompaniment of well-produced choral and organ work.

Ave, Ave,
Ave Maria.

People have come from all the world for the spectacle and the enrichment. Elderly and middle aged couples, many of the men seeming to be led by their wives, raise their candles at each chorus. There are legions of the lame and ill. Dwarfs push handicapped dwarfs in wheel-chairs and nuns in varied habits sweep by. An acromegalic giant stands above the rest. Of all languages, they are of one humanity, and there are many, held together with belief and the power and the glory.

I come down to the very cockpit of the activity in anticipation of the return of the procession and stand by the organ and chorus. There are perhaps twenty men and women choristers, casually attired, directed by an enthusiastic young man who sings with them. The organist is a diminutive man with long gray hair combed so that one might mistake him for a woman. He has the respectful and sublime look of a consummate professional, his small hands sensual and white, his sharp black shoes pointing out a thunderous base.

When the procession is fully returned and the cross and the Virgin have been carried close by and off into the wings, the chorus winds up its presentation and gathers around the organ as the organist plays the postlude. Everyone knows and loves this piece and shares the joy with him--right up to the last, long-held chord. As his hands lift from the keyboard--a cheer goes up--a professional cheer, as if he is a visiting celebrity, and he, with a flourish of pride and elan, shuts a switch under the console. Helped by some of the others, he draws a gray shroud from the shoulders of the instrument, then he slides himself from the richly carved seat, steps back and zippers the shroud down the middle.

The Gate of Sorrows

At the entrance to the Spanish village of Zaframonte there is a gate which is known as the Gate of Sorrows. It’s said that anyone who passes through it seven times in one day will suffer misfortune. This means that a person at seven passages in either direction will have to pass back and forth again in order to make the total of passages nine.

 Even in the present day, particularly in the evening, one sees people coming out of the gate and going back to make the passage again.

Of course the victims of this gate are ignorant foreigners. Visitors have been known to leave the village and immediately have terrible things happen to them.

In 1934, thinking it a charming place, a couple from France came to the village to be married. Knowing nothing about the gate they passed through for the seventh time at great speed in a Bugatti roadster in order to get on with their honeymoon. The couple are still alive; he became a successful businessman and cabinet minister. She became a well-known actress. They have seven children, all alive, and many grandchildren. Their names are Charles and Vivienne LeBrun.

The people of Zaframonte are still waiting for something to happen.

A Remarkable Person

As a young girl Maria Calvas Penaes was gored by a bull. There was disfigurement to her face and body and the loss by later amputation of both her right leg and her right arm. This happened more than sixty years ago. The accident has not stopped her from having a remarkable life.

Married twice, she is the mother of four children. Her first husband died, ironically, in a bullring. At present she has twenty grandchildren, with three more on the way.

Maria is famous for her paintings. She claims to have painted more than twenty thousand oils over a period of forty years. They are broad and colorful, often fantastic, with a strong but simple sense of pattern and design. They frequently depict powerful bulls or prancing horses. Some are languid portraits of imaginary ruby-lipped senoritas in white or black mantillas.

Maria is dappled in light under the bougainvillea by the door of her kitchen garden. "I could not paint the Saints," she says, "I never knew them. I paint the spirit of what could be of what I know, rather than what might have been." Her smile is innocent, toothless, she has a face crinkled from a life of laughing and her black eyes sparkle from within brush-like lashes. "Do you want to buy one?" she asks, "They are not expensive. Nothing good ever is." 

San Tomas of the Red Roses

Huerta de San Tomas, now in ruins, was founded and constructed by monks about 1670. The property lies in a remote countryside in the foothills of the Sierra de Morena in western Andalusia. The main building is a thick-walled two-story stone structure with an enclosed courtyard. The ecclesiastical origins were to be a working farm and a retreat for the consideration of brotherly love--and prayers to bring peace to Spain.

In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, the building was used as a barracks for Republican regulars. One night Franco’s forces mined the building and literally blew the roof off. Twenty were killed. The only survivor was a young woman soldier by the name of Dolorosa de Alvares. She was blown from a window and into a rosebush. Bleeding profusely, she hid until she thought the attackers had left.

Seventeen-year-old Dolorosa was found by one of Franco’s men and taken to a deserted cottage nearby and given the care she needed to recover. The two fell in love and he came secretly to her on several occasions. Eventually the soldier had to go away and a few days later he was killed.

To this day Dolorosa comes frequently to San Tomas and lays down a single rose. Over the years some of these have rooted and the entire ruin is now overgrown with red roses.

The Women of Seville

Trip-tripping, Seville women with Moor complexion; sophisticate, streaked for autumn, spray-fixed into a helmet, tailored, patent pumped, eye-shadow blue as azuelos, eye-lined gypsy-black, a cigarette aimed down the calle, through heltering crowd casteneting sunny sidewalk cafe, then, relaxed, cell-phoning, networking, these perfected women. Correct, animated, clubbing boulevard angry taxi bored clop-clopping fountains, conquistadore caleche and incomplete matadors proud mustache and shiny slick black dashing dons.

A gracious waiter; a pause to praise. Napkin in flourish, laid down like a matador's cape.

Women sip their delicate liquor or blond beer, private consequence and import, inhale smoke rolled on the thigh of a Carmen from another century.