Soup From a Stone

For Fe, for all her support and love.

Once in a while it happens that there is a witness to a murder, but subsequently no evidence of a murder can be found. At least one noir novel must have used this motif. Nothing is more disturbing than a murder that disappears, of course. Those of us who like murder mysteries need to know how the crime was committed, to savor the gore (just a little), and to see justice carried out. That is the usual template for fictional killings.

We should not, however, discard the possibility that a murder can be created, like soup that starts as simple broth and is constructed by several cooks throwing ingredients into a pot. An unnatural death, at the hands of another, will be investigated by more than one detective or private investigator. We all know this, which is why we also know too many cooks can spoil the analysis of what really happened. Clues, evidence, leads - keep adding these, and the pot definitely starts boiling. That makes for a good mystery.

Thus our title is a reference is to the European folk tale known as “Stone Soup” or “Axe Soup.” The soup was nothing but water and a stone, and the soup makers stirred like crazy, lamenting the lack of... potatoes, carrots, onions, mutton, and other great ingredients. Then - voilà! Soup appeared and people could eat.

There is a trickster element to this story and the versions vary, but the stone soup happens when more than one person participates in its preparation. In the case we are going to present, the folk tale comes to mind because just maybe the event that was witnessed had more than two participants (the killer and the victim). It’s just a thought, but worth considering.

Suggestion:

The second title of the old narrative - the axe story - should not be overlooked. It might be relevant in this case. Madame de Noyer, the author of the first printed version with the axe as an object one character is carrying, died the year before the story was published. The publication was in 1720, just for the record. 

Daniel was walking home from the modest but well-situated Bar Barrantes on little Fonseca Square. The bar hadn’t changed much since the late 50s. It was a classic, but only had night life in the summer months. If you were walking veeerrry slowly, it might take 90 seconds to reach the cathedral, it was that close. In good weather, the terraza was always occupied and overflowing. It was much nicer sitting outside.

First Daniel walked three or four steps toward the Pazo de Fonseca, which the Barrantes faced. (In other Lavinia stories, the Biblioteca Xeral or main library of the University is a point of interest. It is on one side of the Pazo but of course has closed for the night, so perhaps that information is irrelevant.) 

Daniel turned right and entered O Obradoiro, the large square in front of the Cathedral. He noticed there was a bright, very full moon, not veiled by ominous rain clouds. On bright nights like this one, the moon always seemed closer to Santiago, nearer the tops of the trees and slate rooftops. It would also cast shadows on the city’s ancient stones when its light filtered through tree branches and cornices. When this happened, and it happened often, the old city became a rippling pool, its streets and walls flowing like the streets and walls in El Cuzco in Peru.

Age seems to bring granite to life.

There is something about the world when the moon’s illumination is so demanding, pulling at us with its silence, forcing us to notice it. Still, we need to be careful because if we pay too much attention to it, we might be sucked upward by the silvery magnet. Lunar levitation. When this occurs (although it doesn’t occur to everybody), we have to focus in the opposite direction to bring ourselves back around, back to solid ground. I personally know what this is like. The moon is like a double-edged sword. Maybe all we can ever do to prevent our coming under its dominion is to close our eyes and wait until dawn.

Santiago de Compostela was all of this on the evening Daniel left Bar Barrantes and started for his home. Stars in the air close to the ground. Moonlight meeting stone and mica: two elements of life and two of death. Chiaroscuro in massive spaces and narrow lanes. One asks: which is to be feared? The Light or the Dark? What is laid bare or what is concealed? I often ask myself if I am alive or dead, or if something is opening so I might pass through it. Through it, not like one walks through an open door, but through it, like a ghost walks through walls.

If you do not have this understanding of how light and night work in Compostela, you may have doubts about Daniel’s sanity, or his honesty. I don’t know Daniel, but I know Santiago and therefore know whereof I speak. The night air is anything but inert, inanimate. It has all the power in the world when it is teamed up with the moon and its stones.

This was the Santiago sky that was summoning Daniel so that, instead of bordering the square in a direct route to his home, he cut through it on the diagonal. He stood at the corner that is situated between the Pazo de Raxoi which is kind of like the town hall and the Hostal dos Reis Católicos. 

Note:

The Hostal is by far the poshest hotel in the city and it is the one with the most historic significance. It started as a hospital, founded by the Catholic Kings Fernando and Isabel. They ordered it to be built so the city could house and treat all the ailing pilgrims who had arrived to worship at the tomb of Santiago the Apostle.

It is impossible to stand in a place like that corner, on a still night, and not have images flash through one’s mind. Crusaders, pilgrims, beggars, thieves, musicians... so many had walked here and left their footprints embedded in the gently bubbling stones of the square. They were gone, but their former presence was not. The stones show the wear of millions of feet. In contrast, they don’t show the gestures and words of the walkers. Ironically, invisibility is not weightless and so the contemporary visitor stands with weighted shoulders, mind scrambling to put all the presences in order, at least by decades.

As rúas (the streets) were, from left to right, much like a fan: Trindade, Hortas, and Carretas. They were simple, unadorned, and maybe that is why they know their worth. People have needed them for centuries.

The corner where Daniel finally stopped overlooks a tangle of narrow, primitive streets. The level where these passageways are is actually set further down along the slope on which Santiago had been founded so long ago. By day there are lots of figures traversing them, hurrying home with bags of groceries oftentimes. One watching from up above sees mostly heads, caps, shoulders. By night, though, there is but a meager trace of the persons who live on the narrow cobblestone streets. Looking down from one corner of the broad Obradoiro, with the stunning backlighting of the cathedral’s façade, the anemic illumination there below would hardly conducive to seeing anything or identifying anyone. Even the whitewashed outer walls of the old, low buildings don’t serve to set off anything more than a distorted shadow.

Nevertheless, Daniel knew he had seen it happen. He could describe the event in surprising (some might say suspicious) detail. He insisted it was not his imagination. And no, he had not had too much to drink - just one glass of wine in the course of two hours. He had seen the attack, had seen how one of the two persons had fallen backward then and in doing so, had caught the frail streetlight head on. That illumination, sparse as it was, had revealed a face that was totally destroyed, the face of a dead person. Of a dead person whose face would never be recognized, even by family and friends. A faceless person, really. Daniel was incapable of making that up. Later, he would have the nightmares to prove it.

No, Daniel did not have a video of what he claimed to have seen, but the scene kept running through his mind like a PowerPoint presentation on a loop. He had naturally had his phone with him and could have taken a picture. That’s true, but the image would have been completely blurry given how dark it was. Plus, he had been using his phone to speak with the police to whom he’d immediately reported the attack. He couldn’t very well report the crime and film the scene simultaneously. He also had decided not to film what was surely a murder, because an angry person with a weapon might not like being photographed. Afterward, he felt guilty about that show of cowardice.

Another thing Daniel knew he could describe was the sidewalk down below, edging along the tiny street. It was only about two inches above the level of the cobblestones, so that anything spilled on it would quickly run off into the side of the road. What Daniel was certain he had seen was a very, very large amount of blood. It had soaked the narrow sidewalk and slid off to dry among the crevices of the uneven stones. (To be honest, these were more like lanes that somebody had decided to pave without erasing any of their former character as routes for horses or small carts.

From his position up above, on the level of the big squads, it had not been obvious to Daniel whether the victim of the attack had been male or female. Nowadays, fewer and fewer women wear skirts. What he did know, he said firmly and repeated firmly, was that the blood had been real, the death a certainty. He couldn’t swear to any exchange of words before the fatal beating, nor any crying out by the victim that might have revealed his or her sex. There had been a couple of thuds, but nothing more, except maybe a third thud, made by a body crumpling.

Daniel was extremely upset, as anybody would be, and suddenly he decided he would feel better if he talked to Lavinia. It wasn’t that late. It was barely ten in the evening. A lot of people had supper then. He also knew she would instinctively try to calm him down. Lavinia answered after one ring, concerned. Daniel rarely called her and this was an odd hour to be discussing work-related topics. 

“Do you have a moment? I just saw something terrible happen.”

.............

“Yes, I’ve called the police.”

.............

“Yes, I’m staying right by where I saw what happened. I can’t turn around, but I haven’t left the area and the police will be here soon.”

.............

They had been speaking for several minutes when Daniel looked up and saw Lavinia standing a few feet away. She too had been in the area near the cathedral and had come right away to offer moral support. She didn’t say she was skeptical about what her friend seemed to be claiming, but she was certainly curious. Not that she wanted to actually see the crime, as gruesome as it seemed to have been. She didn’t think Daniel should be alone, and she was right.

Daniel put his head in his hands and wept. He had never been the sort of person to stand by and let another person be beaten, let alone killed. He couldn’t have reached the spot in time, but he was not considering what might have transpired if he’d chosen that option. He wasn’t afraid, either. He was frankly upset that he had been so helpless. He said it felt like he had been viewing a film or a television screen. Muddy moonlight with streaks of clarity. 

Lavinia pitied him. It was something nobody ever wants to see. Yet she found herself drawn to the low wall overlooking the site of the crime. There, below, was a single, limp - no, shattered - , body. The pale moonlight plus lamplight had turned the flesh into the limbs of a rag doll and the blood to black ink. It had done nothing yo the face because there was nothing left of the one the body had possessed not so long ago.

Lavinia wanted to retch, of course; that often happens when one is surprised by such an image. She wanted to scream, too. She did neither. That would not help her friend and people would gather. She knew that would further cloud the event and its narration. She opted for silence and turned back to Daniel, noting how they had something horrific in common now.

Chaotic, cumbersome, bullet-like thoughts riddled his mind. He hadn’t noticed Lavinia’s reaction. He couldn’t make himself look in that direction. Those were supposed to be empty, eerie but safe streets, the residents now tucked behind windows and shades. Something was very odd, though. Nobody seemed to have detected the scuffle he had seen from further off, nor its bloody aftermath. 

That was the incredible thing: Daniel was apparently the only person in the universe who had witnessed the event, seen the blood, watched the victim totter and collapse. Yet people were living on the other side of the walls, only a few feet away. Lavinia could corroborate his testimony, but he didn’t know that yet.

The two of them go back over to the wall that runs to the right of the Pazo de Raxoi, but only Lavinia looked over (for the second time) while Daniel still turned away. In her subsequent testimony to investigators, she stated she couldn’t see a thing the second time she looked. No corpse, no onlookers, no police. There might have been a darkish shadow a few feet further on, but it was nothing. 

They could go down and see what it was, suggested Lavinia to the police officers, who weren’t especially enthused about having her and her companion go along with them. It wouldn’t be following protocol. Daniel wasn’t interested in going at all. 

Asked to wait nearby while the little streets were being inspected by several police officers, Daniel and Lavinia went with permission to a small café. They needed something to steady their nerves. Sitting in the Camilo, they didn’t know whether they were feeling the horror of having stared at the scene of the violent murder or whether it was the inexplicable disappearance of the crime scene that had shaken them so much. Since no traces of it remained, it couldn’t have happened. Now there was nothing visible, not even a faint smear of blood.

Lavinia mentioned a story she had been told:

“There was a cleric of elevated rank in Santiago. He took to courting a young woman, who may or may not have returned the favor.”

Daniel continued with the legend:

“The young lady had a suitor who became justifiably angry and murdered the cleric. After that, they walled up the street, and nobody could enter the passageway by the Casa da Balconada.”

“That house with the balcony is near Rúa do Vilar, right?” Asked Lavinia.

“Yes,” replied Daniel. “Not far from the Igrexa de Salomé. There’s a small garden by it.”

Then he asked his companion why she had brought up the story and Lavinia explained that it had been told to her as truth by one person and she had always thought it was a real event. Maybe fifteenth century? Sixteenth? More recently she had seen on the internet that the author of a book about legends of Santiago de Compostela claimed to have made it all up. It had never happened. That didn’t stop people from trying to get a look inside the passageway to see the footprints of the cleric and the stain on the stones of the blood oozing from his body.

Daniel couldn’t quite see the logic to the story in relation to what they had seen just a little while ago.

Lavinia promised to elaborate when they weren’t both so upset. For now, she told him, the link she felt was regarding how both murders occurred and how they were remembered, or lost. She couldn’t get her head around it until she’d given it some more thought.

Daniel assented. He had no logic left to draw on for the moment.

Epilogue 1:

Finally Lavinia and Daniel were both allowed to go home but to stay in touch with the police. Each one took off in the direction of home, walking quickly, arms covering, shielding their bodies. It had grown really late. 

Tomorrow they would get together, because they were determined to figure out the story of the murder that might or might not have been. Determined, because this might be a case of do or die. They had seen the murder, even if nobody else had, and they knew they too might have been seen. 

Epilogue 2:

The reference to ‘stone soup’ may have been a little premature. It’s really in the continuation of this story that the motif becomes really relevant. Then the murder seen and unseen by Daniel, then Lavinia, will reveal all its ingredients and its cooks. Feel free to suggest a new title for this one, though.