Focus

She knew the difference between fact and fiction, knew it quite well. (Not everyone did, and that was rather sad, but she could do nothing about that.) In the same way, and for some of the same reasons, she knew the difference between past and present. 

On the other hand, she knew nothing, or almost nothing, about the future. (Almost nobody did, and that was how it needed to be.) However, the future, since it did not exist, was not all that important. What mattered was where she was at this precise moment.

The meal had been close to divine. Nobody would understand, nor did it matter if they did, what it had included, because it was far more than a list of dishes from the menu. 

Still and all, it was hard to say if the best part of the meal had been the grilled zamburiñas (a type of scallop served in the shell), the crisp-fried tirabeques (snap peas) served with homemade ketchup (not the kind one finds in the US, not at all) and an aioli sauce she avoided, or the grilled codfish on cauliflower purée. That was not to overlook the arroz con leite (rice pudding) flavored ice cream that made her think ice cream wasn’t so bad after all. She’d been talked into it by the server, and it hadn’t been wrong to let him do it. Also homemade, it melted in her mouth like heavy cream. Even the café de pota - she didn’t think there was a good translation for that in English, but would look for it later - hadn’t disappointed her. She wondered how it was made and thought about asking some time.

Sitting there, still in the slow process of gathering up the last flavors of the long lunch, not in take-home containers but in her memory, she looked over to her right. The meal had been a solitary one, if you called being without human company solitary (she didn’t, not any more at least). The area was open, so that on rainy, windy days like one often encountered in Galicia, it would have made it impossible to eat in that space. As it was, the two open sides of the dining area, the translucent roof covering with dried herbs gracefully hanging from it, and the silence provided by the lack of people, left room for the softly pounding nature outside. 

That had been a very relevant part of the meal. Perhaps the most important one.

She was in the tiny village of Ponte Maceira (less than eighty inhabitants) and the restaurant had that same name, which was perhaps not creative but was still very appropriate. Adverse to translating place names, she still thought of the toponym's origin: a bridge (ponte) and its long-gone apple tree (maceira) and wondered how old the stone expanse actually was. She would definitely need to find that out. 

[She did find out. Some sources said the bridge was built by the Romans. The same sources - or others - explained that disciples of Saint James, also known as Santiago, were searching for a place to bury their beheaded leader and were being chased by the hordes of non-Christian Roman soldiers when the bridge collapsed and the disciples were saved. She didn't buy the collapse part nor even the transport of the beheaded saint, who seemed to have traveled far and wide in a posthumous state. The bridge might well have been that old, however. It might be the reason it was once called a ponte vella, the old bridge. It was rebuilt in the twelfth century, which still made it pretty ancient. A thousand years is a long time.]

The pounding was really more an example of aquatic enthusiasm, of creamy waters flowing from one level downward to a few feet below, not quite a waterfall, but almost. The cream formed a broad semicircle in the Tambre River and dwindled into sparkly blue clarity that flowed around several stone outposts populated with Queen Anne’s Lace or Meadowsweet, a perfect match for the foamy waters. 

Only the river would remember the battle of that century between Archbishop Xelmírez of Compostela and factions of Pedro Froilaz de Trava. (There was always some reason for going to battle during the previous centuries and those following the clash with the Archbishop. Power was everything.) She hadn't known about the big fight on her first visit and wasn't certain it mattered that she knew it now, but conceded that it was always better to be informed rather than walking around staring blankly at water and stones, then getting back on a bus like cattle and rolling on to the next place.

A bird seemed to be simultaneously drinking from the side of one stone island and bathing with great enthusiasm among the stems of the plants, burdened as they were with their flowers. She thought it was a lavandeira, a wagtail, which she knew had something to do with the myth of women who washed the clothes of people who were about to die. This lavandeira was clearly not going to wash anything but itself and was, she thought (wincing at her own pun) happy as a lark, far from any thoughts of the moribund.

Not far off, she spotted a loureiro (laurel), her favorite tree, both for its mythological features as well as the flavor of its leaves. She had seen all these things once before - except, perhaps, the bird - although she wasn’t sure if the sunlight had been the same. That time she had been looking with newer eyes and mind, a heart that was stronger. At least it’s still beating, she consoled herself.

Immediately she chided herself for the dark thought, out of place amid the sun and greenery, the incessantly rushing waters. It had only occurred to her because what she saw was present; what she had seen before, on her previous visit, was in the past and the past was definitely over.

The Tambre River is poetic enough on its own, and flows through many familiar parts of Galicia to end up in the rías of Noia and Muros on the Atlantic coast. Its name is pre-Roman, Celtic Indo-European in its etymology, and linked to the Tamar River in Cornwall as well as to the Thames itself. (It pays to know about etymologies.) There is no doubt as to the linguistic kinship, since Tambre was first Támaris. Its root, tam - , means ‘dark in color’ for whatever reason. Dark River. Poetic, although she thinks the white cascade contradicts that idea.

Whatever the distant past was, Ponte Maceira, was all like a movie to her now, a series of images her memory was replaying. She knew that, knew the first version she had recorded was in the past, although she longed to watch it again, was watching it now. Would watch it over and over if allowed. (She didn’t know if she was allowed, but wasn’t going to ask anyone for permission to do so. After all, it was her movie and they were her eyes and the throbbing water was hers as well.) She was old enough and alone enough to decide now.

She leaves the restaurant and walks toward and over the bridge.

Ponte Maceira is at this moment like a scene that is being filmed, is like a remake of an older version that has faded just a little. The waters’ curve is proof that the present is in progress and that the cameras are rolling. She is in the new version, a part of her that is not filming it all is in the scene and she is probably also in a few of the photos being taken by tourists with no ears or eyes, just cell phones. The truth be told, she is deliberately sitting on one of the old stone benches beside San Brais chapel, hoping to obstruct their pictures of the little building. They don’t deserve to leave with pristine images of it, since none of them have bothered to step around the side to catch a glimpse of the curved Romanesque apse, set inches from a wall that appears to form part of a pazo or manor house. 

No, this is not her first visit, but her first one will not let her go, not let her remember things the way she wants to, in the sunny present. The past, she thinks, should not fade like that, but hers has. Life can become dull, but the past should remain strong and clear, not grow dim. It should also not block the present that she is trying so hard to understand.

She wants to see things the way they should be seen.

This means she doesn’t know which is better, the old and dim, but secure in her memory, or the new and crisp, but fragile, like she now is. Does she long for what she accepts as lost, or is she trying to hold onto what she has found again? Does she want the ties to the past or the freedom that this very moment seeks to bind her to every rock, every clump of greenery, every thread of the echoing current? She has acquired a new freedom that should be much better, yet it seems to wrench her from the present and lead her in search of that dim past, showing no remorse for what it is doing.

Nevertheless, she has returned, and has proven that the first version of the film she has carefully preserved is not, was not, fiction. She should be able to have it again without paying to enter the theater or renting the movie from an online service. It is hers, after all. The only thing is, she cannot remake it exactly, even though Pierre Menard in the story by Borges had been able to rewrite the Quixote word for word. She is neither Menard nor Borges.

On the other hand, does she want to see history repeated? Does she need to see the headless Apostle flying over the old bridge and the bridge collapsing to save his corpse from the angry Romans? Does she need to see the bridge being rebuilt eleven or so centuries later? (What did people do for all those centuries anyway? Did they cross the dark Tambre by boat? An impossible task, given the force of the cascading current.)

All that is gone except, of course, for the new bridge, the one from the twelfth century. It is a lovely one, after all, with several arches and is a place one can sit and watch the sightless visitors snap photos of themselves from every angle, including the little grist mill that is no longer in use. (Should it be restored as well? Are there any working mills in Galicia nowadays? She knows the answer to that.)

That is all gone now, that past belonging to other people, battles, and purposes no longer exists. All she has is her own first visit and the one today. She recalls the first time, and now she is living the second, with history she did not have before. This is a remake, but not a faithful one. (She is not Pierre Menard and never will be.) There is one way to understand it all, the river, the Queen Anne's Lace, the happy wagtail, the laurel tree and its mythology.

She needs her past and her present with its additional history. She wants to retain the memory of this present, richer and lonelier than her first visit. She does not want it to fade like the first one. 

She watches and waits, like a stone, like the stones in the middle of the Tambre, because the river remembers and is filming every inch it courses through, noisily, joyfully, unconcerned about disciples and Romans, archbishops and their competitors. Nobody can defeat the dark stream with its idle grist mill.

Like a stone, she can do that forever. After all, it has been recorded, engraved, saved for the screen of a heart that once was not alone. She can watch as long as she wants now. Her eyes can still see, and she is glad of that, even as she is not certain whether she is watching past or present or a movie somebody has made but is no longer here. 

She will be her own bridge.