Lavinia Sees the Light (L2.15)

Part I

Lavinia sees the lights flicker as she is finally enjoying a quiet evening with a book instead of staring at an eye-drying screen. It seems so odd to feel the pages, the texture of real paper. Her only wish is that books, real books, were as light as pixels. Sometimes a person cares little for the objects with all those words printed on (usually) white pages and only wants to find the ideas, history, and myths contained in the black letters, so magically arranged for readers. 

On those occasions, when the book itself is of lesser importance, when the words are lures and their hooks go deep - but without causing pain - a person can be forgiven for letting her fingers do the walking through the stories and verses. Books, real ones, the ones made of fiber and dyes, will always be there. Readers mostly like to touch them, not slide their fingers from one screen to another. 

Lavinia, however, is as happy as a clam, or maybe some other animal, on the couch, a soft reading light over her left shoulder, a cup of lion’s mane tea on the stand by her elbow.

And then the expected/unexpected occurs. The power goes out and all efforts to read, whether on paper or a screen, come to a halt. There is no storm, no Galician downpour, nothing to which the sudden curtain of blackness can be attributed. No generator has popped loudly, no lightning has struck. All is silent. And dark. It is too early for a night owl like Lavinia Rivers to go to bed; she rarely closes her eyes before two A.M. 

Curiosity, not fear, will entice her out into the medieval streets she has come to love, come to dream about. Maybe there are others who, like her, have a need to understand the cause of the power outage. If it is a neighborhood that’s gone out, perhaps the line failure is minor and will soon be mended. Maybe some parts of Compostela have electricity. Lavinia has but a single candle and is reluctant to use it up. How long does an eight-inch candle burn, anyway?

Lavinia has been in Santiago long enough by now to know something will happen, that patience is a real virtue in this place. If she goes out, she is certain she’ll find an answer to the outage. Fortunately, she has a fully-charged phone and its flashlight serves to guide her in the direction of the catedral. After all, the tourists are going to be very unhappy if they can’t do any sightseeing or dining - especially dining.

The streets are all the same color, black, and so are invisible. Only the centuries-old stones are perceptible through her shoes. The moon has a strong light, though, and Lavinia’s eyes begin to use it to navigate. She has walked the streets so much that she can almost count the steps from her bedsit to the immense temple with the remains of Saint James. She can run her hands along the stones, interrupted at intervals by store windows and scents of dishes straggling out through doors that are not tightly shut.

Compostela, the one she has come to know, never sleeps. Somebody might well come calling to her place of residence. The question was, who would it be? Should she wait to see? No, the need to go out, soak up the shadows and the world that has not disappeared despite the penumbra, that need is too strong. It is her only recourse at the moment, anyway. Instead of waiting for someone to come to check up on her, she will find the source of the dark on her own.

And so Lavinia gropes her way in the direction already mentioned, and her route, its pavement well worn by millions of feet, including hers, leads her up past As Ánimas church down to Cervantes’ statue in the Praza do Pan, then down past As Crechas and the convent of Sampaio. There, as she walks down the few oddly-placed steps, she recalls the religious museum she’s visited twice, then enters her much-loved Quintana dos Mortos [Square of the Dead]. 

The stone arcades would come into view if she could see them, but the flashlight on Lavinia’s phone isn’t potent enough. She senses them, though, feels like she can touch them if she decides to. They make her think of something mentioned to her recently: the story by Vicente Risco about how he encountered Stephen Dedalus in Compostela. Risco’s story isn’t anything elaborate, but a lot of readers of Galician literature have been entertained by the plot of Dedalus - or rather, James Joyce - coming to Galicia because he’s fed up with Irish culture.

Risco’s story is close to a century old. Lavinia is obviously not expecting to run into Dedalus, or Joyce, since he was after all just a fictional character. She does not meet either Risco or Joyce, but this must be an unusual night after all. Álvaro Cunqueiro is in Compostela, and it almost seems as if the outage, the disappearance of almost all illumination but the moon, is associated with the presence of the much-read author from Mondoñedo in the province of Lugo.

Lavinia is not aware of this, at least consciously, but she knows there is a reason she has ended up in the Quintana. Words are fluttering past her ears now, unspoken, like strangely-shaped moths or even bats. Some of them start to solidify - really? - in the evening. It is still not time to go back to the bedsit and sleep.

O tardo, a word associated with nightmares, materializes yet remains invisible. Lavinia decides she should not go home, that if she has no answers, she will not sleep, blanketed by so much darkness, or that she will have horrible nightmares because her dreams are never pleasant. She is going to stay out for awhile, listening and watching. She will learn much more that way. Maybe she will run into something other than a tardo and find out what’s really happening in the old city.

There is a meowww!, and Lavinia wonders if it it is true cats can see in the dark. Maybe she can follow this cat - if she can locate it - or better yet, ask it, what is going on.

“That’s silly,” she thinks. “Just because it’s pitch black, that doesn’t mean a cat will talk to me or I would understand what it said.”

Then she laughs:

“I must be reading too much Galician literature. I think a cat in the dark can talk because Cunqueiro invented, or somebody like him invented, the gatipardo.

And this is how Lavinia knows Cunqueiro has been, or is in, Compostela. It’s all about the cat.It could be any color or any size, but since there’s practically no light to get a good look and as they say, at night all cats are black, she only knows it as a member of the feline species. 

Gatipardo means (more or less) brown or black or dark cat.

“This is a cat, but the color can’t be determined,” thinks the researcher Dr. Rivers. 

This line of investigation soon stops, because Lavinia laughs at her old academic habit of trying to analyze everything, apply a theory of some sort. She is not interested very much in those things now. Besides, the gatipardo of Cunqueiro doesn’t seem to be an overly pleasant creature. It has the feature of making children wet the bed, which is not a nice thing.

“Gatipedra! That’s what I’m hearing!” She exclaims, not seeing but knowing the little cabaliños, the horses in the fountain of tiny Praterías Square, can hear her. Only a few seconds pass and then a fluffy, furry, silky body brushes against one ankle, then the other. This is an animal capable of loyalty and generosity. It brings solace to the sad or lonely, to those who are suffering from morriña or soidade. These terms, hard to translate, as Lavinia knows, refer to a longing for something that is far away. 

She knows this, but has yet to decipher why she too has this longing. And for what.

There was no such thing as a gatipedra until Lavinia (unknowingly) invented the word. This may mean she is the author of the creature and can develop its identity as she desires.

“I need to give gati a name. That is not going to be easy, because there are so many beautiful words in the Galician language, but let’s see… “

She thinks quickly, sensing now that a storm was coming, and announces, to her companion as well as herself:

“Your name is Faísca, Spark, and I have a feeling you have come to the Quintana  to illuminate me…”

And this is how Lavinia meets the tordavisco: a bird that can change the colors of its feathers. It also lays a talking egg, a green one. 

“Funny how Cunqueiro’s tordavisco lays a green egg. Wonder if that is served in Galicia, or is that only in Dr. Seuss?”

Lavinia is appalled at her absurd thoughts and tries to attribute them to the silence that is letting them rush in…

 She is aware that she knows almost nothing about this creature, but resolves to go right away to the biblioteca to research it. (Some academic habits die hard.) she doesn’t know if tordavisco can have the form tordavisca, for example. Nordavisco, which could be associated with snow. Did one exist, alongside its cousins the tordaviscos?

“The possibilities are endless,” Lavinia chirps, then feels embarrassed.

“Murigante…”

The word flits by Lavinia’s left ear. She knows immediately that it is companion to gatipedra and the torda/norda family. The word then seems to embody itself, as its flittering communicates in the silver moonlight that it is a bat. It can be black or white, is always cold. It loves to listen to stories. It keeps kitchen fires burning. (Lavinia wonders if this is literally or figuratively.)

The murigante weaves webs. Its hands and eyes are very human. It knows the value of practical skills, including that of starting a fire. These are only some of the things to be learned about murigante…

At this point the blackout (yes, this will be a contradiction of terms) began to assemble itself before Lavinia’s eyes, on Quintana dos Mortos, the open square that is alive now that its original dead have been moved elsewhere.The slabs of stone are growing white, as if something were producing a light from beneath their surface. The figures are still shadows, but they are speaking and attempting to identify themselves. 

Now they are moving into words, leaving behind the memory of their original shapes, language and reality linked. Lavinia watches. The Quintana glows. The darkness that forms night’s walls has melted, or coalesced, on the stony pages of the deadless square. Everything is alive, has life.

Tordavisco… Murigante… Faísca Gatipedra

It is as if they’re wearing name tags written in fluorescent ink that is catching moonbeams.

This space is that strong. Things have been happening here for aeons. They are still here, still happening…

The above description might be overkill. (Scale back.)

Lavinia watches what is occurring; she realizes her vision no longer impeded by the dark. She senses, knows, sees what the figures are doing, even if she only sees them in her mind. Then she sits down, hooded jacket beneath her, cross-legged. She needs to be at the height of the gatipedra for a number of reasons. She knows her stone cat will make sure she understands. 

Somehow, Lavinia feels, it is now broad daylight yet at the same time the whole city is a blank, black page with the power outage. Each character, nonetheless, has come to aid her. Specifically, the tordavisco, the murigante, and the gatipedroslashgatipedra

Now Lavinia is told by the creatures that they are members of a menagerie created by Cunqueiro from Mondoñedo but maybe really by people of rural areas. 

“They have come to Compostela to do what, though?” Lavinia naturally is confused. She doesn’t think it’s related to the lion’s mane (mushroom) tea she drank just before the lights went out. 

Part II

The first part of this story could have been a lot longer, but it seemed preferable leave Santiago de Compostela and go to Mondoñedo to determine whether creatures like gatipardo (Gatipedra only belongs to Lavinia) do or don’t exist.

Lavinia, newly arrived in Mondoñedo with companions who are very creative and friendly, is lured to a spot by a few strategically placed signs that say: Ponte do Pasatempo 1483. The bridge spans - although ‘span’ may be a bit regal for a bridge that has just one loop for water to flow through - the Río Valiñares. 

Locals of course know the origin of the name, even if they never learned the precise names of the nobles. They have also hatched a few alternatives to the true story… Ponte do Pasamento, as everybody knows, is Bridge of… Stopping? Passing? Death? 

(It’s the vagueness of the pasamento in relation to a bridge that creates the uncertainty.)

1483 was not at a good year for Mariscal Pardo de Cela. The Catholic Monarchs were on their way up and tolerated contenders to the throne very poorly. 

1483 should be the name of the bridge.

Part III

[from the journal of author Lavinia Rivers]

It is late. I am exhausted after hours and hours of revising this story. I’m not giving up, though. If I don’t explain what happened to me, I may just be destined to haunt the Quintana dos Mortos, where this all began.

I’ll try to work on the story tomorrow. For sure, yes.