Strangers in the Night (L1.4)

There’s that rather nice-looking stranger again. I like his black, well-groomed beard. I keep seeing around the old part of Santiago de Compostela. Most of the time, I think, he wears a darkish pullover with a round neck and a nice shirt. He also wears a casual jacket that fits him well, ending at just the right spot on his hips. His shoes are dark brown, I think, and nicely polished. The man is definitely attractive, with his neatness and eyes like warm chestnuts. Well, I imagine that’s the color, since I haven’t gotten close enough to be sure. He looks like any friendly Galician doing errands or heading to and from work or maybe heading to a bar to meet friends. Because a man like that, nice-looking and carefully dressed, just has to have friends. He looks serious, though, so probably he doesn’t socialize with just anybody. I also can’t imagine him spending hours in a bar, getting drunker as the night goes on. No, he looks quite well-behaved. (That’s an odd thing to think about an adult male and one you don’t even know, Lavinia. What are you trying to say, anyway?)

That’s what I told myself for the first few times I spotted him along the Rúa Nova or O Franco or O Preguntoiro or the Praza de Mazarelos all those old streets and spaces that are constantly populated with people. Everybody runs into everybody all the time because everybody is out tending to the various parts of their lives. Compostela, the way life should be. Much more fitting than that slogan, used to describe Maine where my mother lives.

Except there’s something I don’t quite understand about the bearded, good-looking guy. He certainly keeps showing up, crossing my path, running into me. This truly is not strange - like I’ve already pointed out - because one runs into same people a lot in the old part, called by locals o casco vello. He never quite looks at me, so maybe he doesn’t know I notice when he shows up on my radar. Perhaps he thinks I am following him, which is utterly impossible. I mean, I would never do that and know nothing more about him than what I see of him in the casco vello.

There he is again, in the San Pedro neighborhood, near where I’m staying while I’m in the city for a few weeks. Well, it is a popular area, revitalized but still aware of its medieval charm. Lots of people come here for small store shopping or some excellent food that is authentically Galician. Two days ago I saw him in the Praza de Cervantes, near the Rúa de Xerusalén, where I went to the little Casa da Troia Museum. (I try to revisit museums as well as churches in Compostela, because that way I might run across a new niche to inspect. I like digging around in local history when not cooped up in the library doing research. This city has so many secrets.)

I am feeling uneasy. I mean, if I see him, doesn’t he see me? Plus, people here might not know me, but they can tell I’m not from here, not Compostela and not even from Galicia, so I probably stand out. Maybe it would be a good idea to stop him the next time we cross paths, although that would be hard, given that he never really comes that close. I’d have to hurry, maybe even run, to reach him. Either that or call out the equivalent of “Hey you! Who are you?” in Spanish or Galician. Maybe if I could look straight at him and have a brief chat, I could get a sense of where he’s coming from, whether his intentions are good or bad, or even if he has any intentions. I mean, he must have a wife and a couple of kids and probably has a lot to do for his job, has to go to different parts of the city. Not everybody works in an office, a pharmacy, or a university.

***

I’m starting to worry. Maybe I’ll take a day off from work and go for a walk along the Sarela on the edge of the city. It’s a lovely day and the area where the stream runs is one I haven’t explored yet. I read there are some old buildings that used to be tanneries and the part where the current gets stronger have houses set midstream. I believe they were grist mills, although it must be hard to sleep or think with all that water constantly rushing by. Also a bit dangerous if you have small children.

This little bridge has a great view of the Sarela. There’s a high drop to the water, though, and the bridge needs repair. The height is making me dizzy. I hate heights. Why did I come here? The view, yes, but now I’m thinking this was a bad idea.This stone slab, the one under my right foot is shifting, a lot. Now it’s rocking, and now my foot is treading on air because the stone has just fallen into the stream, leaving a big, gaping hole beneath me.

I’m falling into the Sarela. I can’t swim. The current will bash me up against the rocks in the middle of the stream.

The stranger has appeared and he rescues me. What was he doing there? Clearly this is no longer a coincidence. He has to be a stalker. I should have taken my chances with the Sarela.

Now he’s explaining that we know each other and he knows somebody has been following me, so he wanted to help. Wait! HE is the one who’s been following me. Nevertheless, he doesn’t offer to explain how we know each other and I don’t want to ask. Could he be shy? 

Who was guilty of setting trap? That is what the stranger wants to know, because he is certain it had been a trap. How could anybody know I would go to that precise spot? I have the same questions…

One explanation, I guess, is that I’ve been seen coming out of Tertulia several times after working on some papers discovered there. It wasn’t my doing: the chef at my favorite restaurant asked me to help identify the papers because he knows I speak English and some of the things are in English. They’re pretty old, too. I said sure, to do him a favor. The papers were located at the bar of the chef’s friend. The bar, A Tertulia, was being remodeled. I’ve been a handful of times and once saw a rickety old woman at the door of the little Igrexa do Carme watching. I just thought she was asking for alms outside the church. 

The stranger - my stranger? - tells me the old woman, whom he calls a velliña, asked the neighbor to A Tertulia, an architect, what the forein lady - me - was doing. The architect apparently made a casual inquiry in the bar about my reasons for going there so often and spending so much time there. Nice women don’t do that.The bar’s owner must have explained, not concerned about revealing anything. So there was no secret about what was a very mysterious find in an old chest when the renovations started?

The architect probably conferred with the woman, who lives along the Sarela, according to my stranger. (Stop calling him that!) Or rather she lives inside it, surrounded by current, near the old tanneries. The rushing waters must have driven her mad. That, or old age. Or poverty.

The tanneries! I had decided to come here because the buildings looked interesting architecturally. Besides, I saw a map of the Sarela hiking route in turismo.

Somebody must not want you to unravel mystery of whatever it is you’re looking at in A Tertulia, he says.

How do you know about that and what exactly do you know?

Compostela is full of secrets that many people know.. Be careful.

***

I’m going to be more cautious and check behind me now. It’s probably a good idea not to come here any more. But I have to find at least one answer: A note among the papers says “Para a nosa biblioteca.” For our library, written in Galician decades and decades ago. Who was the nosa in a nosa biblioteca and where was or is the library? It had to be an odd library, too, given the items I’ve been inspecting - books, poems, a scrap of a quilt, things like that. I think I’m better off working from home, so I’m removing a few items that fit in my portfolio. I need to go to O Franco and then to the Alameda to see the azaleas in bloom. 

Here’s the back of the Biblioteca Xeral, the big university library, not the public one. I see a young goth was heading in my direction, looking at me with hard eyes. No! She’s grabbed my portfolio!

The stranger is here again, breaking my fall because I just collapsed. He’s insisting I need to go to Emergency because I’ve got a long, deep gash in my left arm and am losing a lot of blood. Why? Why? Nobody but I knows what’s in the portfolio. In the end I’d left A Tertulia with a map I’d drawn of where the secret library (by now I figure it must be secret) could be located. The other papers weren’t actually the originals from the cache that had been discovered. They were photocopies. I’d also taken a number of photos with my phone, but the attaching goth girl didn’t get that. Somebody had tried to make me fall into the rapid current of the Sarela stream on the outskirts of the city. Now this. Are the two incidents related?

Why would a woman be watching as I left the little bar? Why would one rob me and stab meat the same time? Are these failed, flimsy attempts on my life or efforts to scare me? What made a little library so important? Important enough, that is, to keep it a secret.

I’m out of the hospital. It’s a day later. I’m just going to go sit in Fonseca Square, and fully expect my stranger to appear, which he does. He lowers himself onto the granite bench nearest the Rúa da Raíña and inquires politely about my injury. I’ll be fine, the dozen stitches just need to heal and I’m likely have a nice scar as a souvenir. For the first time I am able to look directly atNameless Mr. for the first time and am about to thank him for shepherding me to the hospital. He asks me:

“You don’t recognize me, do you?”

“No. Should I?” I am starting to feel uneasy again.

“We met before, you know.”

“Before? When?” He must be referring to when I’d first arrived in Santiago.

“When you were here before.”

“But that was years ago.” I hope his name will come to me and I can recall where or under what circumstances we’d met, but nothing. It must have been one of those college student parties where nobody is very normal. I also hope I hadn’t done anything foolish on that occasion, since I have no recollection of having met the man. The stranger who has basically saved my life twice now, to be honest.

“You were really upset about the way a guy, Lucas I think, had treated you, and you left the party by yourself. I offered to walk you home. Not that this city is full of criminals - although you’ve recently run into a couple of them - but certain streets are rather deserted after midnight. You refused to let me and hurried off alone. You said we could have coffee the next day instead. Maybe you were afraid of me, now that I think about it. But you never showed up where we’d said we’d meet. That café isn’t there any more, by the way, but there’s another right next to it, if you’d still like that coffee.”

I’m starting to think he sounds pitiful, but he is simply friendly. Friendly and nice. Not a very exciting description. He does seem to be stalking me, you know. Still, it would be ungrateful of me to refuse the coffee scheduled so long ago.

I have to ask him his name.

“I’m Daniel. Daniel Campo. I’m from Urdilde originally, but you probably don’t know where that it. Most people don’t. It’s about twenty minutes from here, nothing special. Anyway, my parents moved here when I was eight, so this is home.

“What do you do for work?”

“I’d rather not say.”

Oh dear. “Do you remember my name?” (He must have heard me give it in the emergency room of the hospital, though.)

“Yes, I do.” Silence.

I’ve already decided not to tell Daniel any details about what I had been doing at A Tertulia, but I can explain why I’m back in Santiago dee Compostela: my research on a woman from the US who had come to Galicia in the 1920s and produced numerous photographs. Daniel nods, but sI can’t tell if he’s bored or thinking about something else. We’ll have our coffee, but tomorrow I’m going to sketch the map I’d constructed again, I think I’ve figured out where a nosa biblioteca is, or at least how to walk toward it. The uncertainty comes from the fact that that library isn’t on any map of the city that exists, except mine. It is something you might get to if you found the right starting point. I think I identified that point last night while under the influence of pain drugs. 

Who else knew? Who else wants to keep me from searching and how could they know what I’ve been sifting through in the back of A Tertulia beside the old stone hearth? Would somebody else come along and try to stop me? Daniel might even be one of them, trying to gain my trust, then maybe pushing me off a bridge or stabbing me himself, dressed as a woman.

Like he’s said, Compostela has a lot of secrets that many people know.

This is going to be my last visit to the little bar, in the now-creepy back area. There are some rough-hewn stairs to the lower area, below ground level. This is worth exploring. In Compostela, there are always surprises when people dig below the surface, so I am nervous, but this old place has something odd about it. I’m not telling the owner what I’m doing, but I hope he won’t be upset at my poking around his place when I’m only supposed to be looking at some old papers. Over to the right - facing what must be the Pombal Sreet, I see a door. A very, very old door, probably made of chestnut. It has metal hinges, a sliding bolt, and some studs for decoration or reinforcement. I want to see it closer up. Was it locked? Of course it must be. 

Of course not. Creaking and heavy, the door is moving. Well, I did do more than touch it, because I actually leaned my shoulder into it until it gave way. I’m in a long, dark passageway. Where it leads, and how far one has to go to get to the end of the passageway is not clear. I can’t think about that right now, because this has to be the path to the library. The route lay underground all the time. I’ve discovered one of the city’s secrets. I’m going to live to regret it.