Gray Days, Black Nights

The Graystockings were meeting to decide what their next step would be. They had to draw attention to something entirely unrelated to their library of women’s knowledge, as they liked to call it. The distraction was necessary because the ensuing chaos would allow them to move the materials that had been gathered over several generations, many generations. They were spread out in several spaces that only they were able to locate on a map, but it was not so easy to access those spaces.

Secrecy had been essential. The first Grays, many decades ago, had been aware of censorship and derisive comments directed at the things women did. The early contributors and organizers of readings or lectures had suffered for their bold attempts to publish or to speak up in public. Certain topics were forbidden. There had been efforts to say what they knew and thought, but even Rosalía de Castro, who was the acknowledged foremother of the Galician Renaissance, had felt that women weren’t allowed that freedom.

Women were constantly making comparisons between their sex and the enslavement of one race by another. It was tragic, but even the male abolitionists hadn’t gotten the hint that women were expected to be the angel in the home, which in a sense had been just a gentle form of slavery. Segregation of the sexes, or requiring women to be accompanied whenever they left the house, the ones with power or louder voices, took all this for granted. Some sexes were more equal than others.

Hence the need to create upheaval, to keep the authorities in uncertainty as how they might meet the Grays’ demands without appearing to fear them. That would signify political weakness. The group knew this and planned a massive power outage to hold the entire city of Santiago de Compostela hostage.They would keep the entire urban area, from the casco vello of medieval origin, to the ensanche or area of modern expansion, in the dark until their demands were met. 

Some members of the group had the necessary expertise. They scaled the generators run by the company known as Iberdrola. To the others, they abbreviated their account of the maneuver and reported, in minimalist fashion, that they had cut wires here and there, smashed tubes, broken off casings, driven holes into different sections of the energy-creating structure. Name a method of sabotage and they had applied it. They didn’t favor doing harm to people - most of them weren’t aligned with this option, at least - but had no qualms destroying property if it were deemed necessary to the cause.

The power went out all over the city, as if a midnight-colored névoa or fog had fallen over the city, its underbelly exactly fitting the contours of Compostela. It was an impressive darkness, one that did not speak yet crept into every home and sat, waiting for answers, for promises. The ones who had caused the outage were also waiting, for answers, for promises. They hadn’t thrust the city into total blackness just for the fun of it.

“You must swear to do no harm to what we have. You must help us locate a proper place for what we possess. You must provide a secure method for transferral from the current locations to a permanent home.” The leader of the Graystockings stated the demands succinctly, in a voice that radiated fortitude and indicated the members of the group were ready to enforce their demands. They did not reveal anything about themselves, not wanting to give anything away. They had chosen the color gray for the group to use among themselves. But they also thought of how they could blend into the urban architecture, into its ancient stones, any time it proved necessary. Gray was truly the most powerful color.

The Grays, led by a woman who went by the name of Argana, were a determined group. Maybe their strength came from their clan origins, that Celtic blood people liked to talk about. People who were mostly archaeologists, historians, or romantics. Their strength could also have come from their sex. After all, they were females. They were experienced survivors. They were smart. They were excellent at keeping secrets. They had a purpose. That purpose could save the world.

This was the group’s thinking and it made them gutsy. They were going to make the authorities accede to their wishes. There would be no power, no light in homes and other buildings in the city until that happened. The city magnates were their hostages. They would be able to do nothing until they acquiesced to the Graystockings’ demands.

While they were waiting for the initial response to be given, the group gathered in the grove by the little church of Santa Susana to discuss their strategy, its chances of success, and what a possible Plan B might look like. They weren’t worried, you see, because everything they did was done carefully, slowly. It was like the handiwork they call slow stitching. You take your time, you think it through, you take your needle or whatever tool is required for the action, and then you proceed. 

The power outage had taken decades to plan. Maybe longer. As the city’s power grid had changed and grown, so had the strategy of taking back the night, so to speak. The Grays had always used the night to do many things, safely. Now they were using it for leverage to move a treasure, safely. Their lives might be on the line, but so were the lives of countless women who had contributed to the clandestine repository of knowledge. Now it was times to ensure the continuation and the security of that knowledge.

The Graystockings always turned to texts, word weavings, for guidance. That allowed them to continue the connections, creating links through repetition and conversation. The connections were the threads like Ariadne’s for surviving the labyrinth with more than one Minotaur. They were the threads used by Penelope to weave and unravel, her ruse to remain unfettered. They were the threads used by the woman in Rosalía de Castro’s immense poem, “Tecín soia a miña tea,” I wove my cloth alone. Except she wasn’t alone. She was in the company of many others.

The threads were very strong. One researcher had written a book titled Golden Cables of Sympathy. A rather odd title, but it told immense things about women on both sides of the Atlantic. It told well-kept secrets and gave well-founded hope that if only the connections could be made and strengthened, tended to, the world would be a better, safer place.

All this and more was in the minds of the group’s members as they gathered in the dark, but with good torches, by Santa Susana. Susana had been a martyr of the third century, killed by Diocletian because she refused to marry a pagan. (Or maybe she just didn’t want to marry. She had been interested in studying science, after all.) Susana’s carballeira or oak grove, had often been the site of important events, often political in nature. This gathering was also political. 

The source of reflection and further planning on this occasion was a poem by New York writer Louise Glück, “Parable of the Hostages.” It was tied to many things, but also to hope. The poem ends with the lines “There on the beach, discussing the various

timetables for getting home, no one believed it could take ten years to get back to Ithaca.” The Grays were not concerned about the length of time. Ten years was a drop in the bucket. They were not on a beach, but rather on the attractive Alameda in their own city, looking out toward an invisible horizon with no electricity running across it right now. They lived in Ithaca, but they felt it wasn’t home if their treasures had to be hidden. Centuries of silence demanded a remedy.

The Graystockings, who included Argana, Aldara, Sibila, and several others, insisted that the poem was right: “no one foresaw that decade of insoluble dilemmas—oh unanswerable affliction of the human heart: how to divide the world’s beauty into acceptable and unacceptable loves!” This should calm the members of the group as they waited for the response from the city authorities. Nobody wanted to resort to violence, after all. They knew Glück was correct, that the world had been separated into the acceptable and unacceptable. They knew what it meant to be classified among the unacceptable. For centuries, they had served as the guardians of the unacceptable, among other things.

The latter part of the poem was more confusing, because it wasn’t clear who the greeks symbolized. Were they the women and their secret existence or were they the ones who ran the city? “On the shores of Troy, how could the Greeks know they were hostages already: who once delays the journey is already enthralled; how could they know that of their small number some would be held forever by the dreams of pleasure, some by sleep, some by music?”

That is, did the Graystockings have everything they needed already? A place to live, a place, or places, to meet, a social fabric that protected them like a cocoon is woven to protect itself? Did they not have all that? Was the risk of taking the city hostage to get one demand met really worth it? Would they have to struggle for ten years to get home? To get back to the quiet but committed lives they had been living?

Or were the Greeks really the people of importance, living a comfortable, public life, thinking they deserved all that pleasure and comfort? Were they the ones whose awakening was near? Who had to agree to the Grays’ demands if they ever wanted their light back?

The power would never return if the authorities gave the wrong answer. That much had been carefully thought through. Only two people knew how to reverse the darkness and they would never reveal the secret. It would be necessary to eliminate every member of the organization and there would still be only silence. Patience was not in limited supply among the women, so they continued to mull over other texts, moving their experienced fingers over the pages. There were always pages, like fine cloth, imperceptibly inked and smoothed by the process carried out by so many. Books like cocoons.

Then word came. It came by means of a messenger who was almost not there, yet whose arrival made everyone look up. The tall torch lit her face and she said, simply, “They’ve agreed to talk.” Nobody clapped or hugged the one next to hear. Nobody wanted to rush to the administrative building on the Obradoiro, facing the cathedral. It wasn’t clear yet where the authorities were even located, given that they infiltrated the entire city of Santiago. Maybe only some of them were willing to talk. However, that might be the first step.

The messenger’s name was Noa and she proceeded to give what information she had. Everything needed to be done with caution. Rome hadn’t been built in a day, and Santiago wasn’t going to be changed in a day, either. The men in the municipal building were asking for data, facts, proof. They were even talking about a budget. Surely nobody expected them to fork over millions of Euros for a ladies’ project? A little they could spare, perhaps, but nothing extravagant.

That was worrisome. It sounded like most of the other requests made to the persons with control over funding cultural activities. The tendency was to give a talk, pay the speaker a pittance to present really important ideas, then serve great wine, seafood, and flan de queixo, creamy flan, as a bonding gesture. Not going to work with the Graystockings. They knew about it all and were not ready to accept the fake gesture. Noa would have to return with a non, obrigadas from her colleagues, no thanks. The conditions would be communicated shortly. The Grays were not fooling around.

In other stories, the negotiations would be carried out and the people involved would come to a satisfactory agreement. In this case, the process has been excruciatingly slow. Nobody seems in a hurry to give in, not even an inch. This was expected, so the hostage-takers were prepared. The city’s residents would continue to go around without any illumination in their streets, no light in their homes except for candles and flashlights, and, in many cases, no warm water or no ability to cook. 

No, the terms were set and there had to be a guarantee that they would be met before even the tiniest light bulb could flicker on. The city fathers were reluctant to agree to the conditions, but they knew the residents over whom they rules would start to complain. It might make for very bad results in the upcoming election. Still, stubbornness has no easy cure.

At this time, the city of Santiago de Compostela has been under light quarantine - the Graystockings prefer the term hostage - for about two weeks. 

Negotiations continue. All are calm and hopeful. They are also prepared for whatever might happen. A lot of lives are riding on this. A lot of lives, but even more importantly, a lot of knowledge.

It will all depend on how much the people in power are willing to cede that power to others, ones who will use it properly, not just give wine and cheese parties.

That power outage is essential, but it will allow the light to get in. Like Leonard Cohen wrote, there’s a crack in everything.

Even in the city government, in the structures of the church, in the teachings of academics.

Light is the cure. After centuries beneath the surface, the Graystockings, librarians, writers, and artists know this to be true, more than anybody else does. Cohen said, ‘ring the bells that still can ring’, and the chorus, the less-heard voices, join him, saying ‘forget your perfect offering’ to the power-hungry.

They can starve in the dark. It’s their choice.