Scholastica's Secret

Lavinia once again is following Rosalía’s poem through the city of Santiago. This means she is headed in the direction of the museum that is attached to San Martiño Monastery. She is walking toward the museum, because among other religious artifacts, it housed the statue of Santa Escolástica, Saint Scholastica. Her saint, of sorts, although Lavinia wasn’t Catholic and maybe not a believer in anything... except that Scholastica, for some reason she believes in Scholastica. 

That Saint Lady has something about her, Lavinia is convinced. She thinks that it is all right to see her more as a real woman and less as a miracle-working nun. That was a way of undermining what might otherwise appear to be belief in a religion. What Lavinia craves is a figure who could serve as a guide of sorts, somebody who has a good head on her shoulders. Maybe somebody like the older sister Lavinia had never had.

There is a sharp sound somewhere outside, on the old street. Lavinia rubs her eyes and tries to focus. She needs answers. She needs help.

Lavinia finally arrives at her destination and sees by the sign on the heavy wooden door that she can go in. She steps carefully around the big jamb and goes to her left, where a woman, not young, with salt-and-pepper hair in a fifties style, is sitting. The woman’s reading glasses have been slid down on her nose. She is friendly, but not talkative. 

Lavinia pays the reasonable entry fee and informs the youngish older woman with her grandmother’s hair style that she basically plans to just go talk with Scholastica. This only results in an odd glance from over the top of the glasses, but nothing more. Not something visitors should announce, perhaps. Too chatty.

Apparently not too many people were in the habit of showing up in San Martiño and paying to have a chat with the Lady in Black. Perhaps nobody else.

Lavinia steps forward a few feet and takes in the broad, high space that is the monastery, built around the end of the ninth century. She recalls that it is the largest monastery and church in Spain, after El Escorial, but that the latter means nothing to her despite having been there two or three times. El Escorial is too close to kings and military leaders to feel comfortable. Besides that, it doesn’t speak like San Martiño does. It also doesn’t have a Santa Escolástica, which is the major difference,

Now Lavinia goes to the right and sits for a moment in the row of the closest pews to the chapel where her saint resides. It’s part of her ritual, a ritual she never intended to have. She takes out her leather-bound edition of Rosalía’s complete works and opens it to where the brown silk ribbon is always marking the spot. It’s the poem “Santa Escolástica.” Today she wonders if the poem is going to tell her to stop reading it so much because that’s going to wear it out. Not the book, the poem.

After reading the whole poem for the hundredth time, she looks up and asks:

Can you keep a secret, Scholastica? She expects no answer, but still watches and waits as if there were one forthcoming.

Silence is the response, but it is a responsive silence, one that gives her a sense of having been heard.

I’ll try to explain, but I may be mistaken about the details. In spite of herself and the rational knowledge that the statue has not spoken, Lavinia feels an obligation to explain to it why she has returned, yet again and with the poem, to Scholastica’s chapel. (She doesn’t really see it as a chapel, because the area is so stark, so utterly unadorned, so boring. There is a simple plaque indicating the sculptor. No need to reread that. She already knows the image is by the famous sculptor Xosé Ferreiro; it’s from the late eighteenth century. The clouds where the cherubs are floating are as grimy as can be.

I am very concerned that two groups are battling for control of a plan or project.

This is what makes her uneasy, thinks Lavinia, but she has no proof of any sort that this is happening.:

Some of the people I know may be involved.

Once again, there is absolutely no evidence of any sort that some of the people Lavinia knows are up to no good. It’s got to be all in her mind. She keeps trying to have a conversation with Scholastica, however. It doesn’t matter how taciturn the saint is. She’s always like that. Keep trying.

Now I’ve been asked to help with something. I have no idea whom to trust or if nobody is to be trusted.

I don’t know what’s at stake and why they are trying to drag me into it. 

I don’t know what to do.

I need your help, but insist you not tell anybody. It could make things very difficult for me, but also I fear someone could get hurt.

Scholastica appears very serene, relaxed. What is being said to her does not seem to worry her. If Lavinia really were in trouble, she would offer her assistance. That is what good saints do. However, while there is no logical reason for any of her visitor’s fears, they do deserve some attention. Lavinia doesn’t look like she’s going to leave any time soon.

Now it appears the poem that brought her to the monastery today is not the usual one. It’s not “Santa Escolástica,” the one from Rosalía’s last book, En las orillas del Sar, written in Spanish. Instead, it’s one that haunts everybody who’s ever heard or read it, and it’s in the language Lavinia is learning, faster than she expected: 

¿Qué pasa ò redor de min?

¿Qué me pasa qu'eu non sei?

Teño medo d'un-ha cousa

Que vive e que non se vé.

Teño medo á desgracia traidora

Que ven, e que nunca se sabe onde ven.

What’s happening around me?

What’s happening that I don’t understand?

I’m afraid of something

It’s alive but can’t be seen.

I’m afraid something terrible will happen

Some that’s coming, no one knows from where.

Despite her please to the saint, it isn’t people Lavinia fears. It’s the city. An obviously irrational fear. She can’t tell anybody what’s going on, or what she thinks is going on, because they’ll see her as the crazy foreigner. Which she might very well be. Still, it can’t hurt to share her thoughts with the saint who must be able to keep a secret. 

I’m starting to see things. Now she was getting closer to the truth.

I can’t concentrate. No explanation why.

I keep walking through the streets, over and over and over, street after street. This was beginning to sound a bit like whining, childish whining. An excuse for not working more on the research that had brought her to the city, was paying for her stay, would get her a promotion at her university.

I am also hearing things, even when nobody’s around.

Who says nobody’s around? Who knows who is here? Or anywhere?

It’s like pounding, or beating on something. On a wall, maybe. Maybe not out in the open, because it’s muffled. Scholastica does not move.

There’s always a lot of construction going on in the city. It’s a World Heritage Site, over twelve centuries old. There has to be a lot of repair and upkeep in a place like Santiago.

Lavinia doesn’t see things this way.

The stones won’t stop. They keep demanding to be touched and sometimes my fingers get rough from trying to smooth out the walls of the old streets. I try, but I just can’t. When I think I’ve made some progress, the stones make a tiny noise and I look at them. That’s when I see all these tiny black things crawling over them. It’s awful. The city seems like it’s covered with little ants the color of coal, or jet. 

Acibeche, the black stone that’s part of this city. Onyx, some call it. Used for jewelry. Artisans worked it in the Middle Ages.

It appears that Scholastica is listening.

Sometimes the little dark dots look like they form a design, or words. I know that’s impossible, because the dots aren’t really there, but I keep trying to read them.

This is not something a person should confess, but it demands to be said. Lavinia is not being logical. Her career was not built on fairy tales.

Other times a hand or a head motions to me from a narrow street, telling me to come over. I end up going down it, or up it, and time disappears. I don’t know what street I’m on, but I know how to get back to my bedsit. The streets tell me which way to go. Silent sins, everywhere, but I’m the only one who can see them.

There is definitely cause for concern. This is not normal.

I’m in Fonseca Square and the bishop walks out, on his way to mass in the Catedral. I’m on San Pedro Street and somebody goes by with a full load of hay in a cart with odd squeaking wheels. I’m walking toward the Museo do Pobo Galego and a barefoot child of six bumps into me, almost spilling a whole container of milk she’d been balancing on her head.

The incidents she is describing are unnerving, but not life-threatening. Lavinia feels dumb just telling Scholastica about them. Loose pages from books, scattered photographs, lost and found. They can’t be more than that.

Can you please keep a secret, Scholastica?

The saint must understand, because she must know more than one language. After all, she was born in Nursia, where they had to have spoken something that would eventually become Italian. Plus, she’s here in Galicia. She has to be able to communicate with visitors from many places.

Could the panic attacks that she occasionally suffers now be the reason for imagining voices and strange beings? How could this not be a bad situation? She has all of the symptoms, although not all at once: heart racing, dizziness, tingling fingers, sweating, the feeling of losing control. She doesn’t have chest pains, but the sense of terror that washes over her is almost unbearable. She needs to see a doctor, but has hoped to put it off until she gets home. If she gets home.

Please don’t tell anybody I’m scared to death and seeing things, Scholastica. They’ll think I’m crazy.

The conversation, such as it was, is now over. Lavinia is going to shake off the feeling that brought her to the monastery, but she won’t forget to take the book, Rosalía’s complete works, with her. The only thing is that now she’s afraid to read anything. It could be the source of the problem. She never should have read what Rosalía wrote about Santiago being the cemetery of the living, because that line is now imprinted on her brain. 

When she walks through the Quintana dos Mortos, as she often does, she thinks of how that Square of the Dead takes up that huge space behind the Catedral. Should she avoid it? She thinks of her saint, who wasn’t willing to give her the time of day. She sees the repair and cleaning being done to a part of the stone arches on Rúa Nova, because some of the columns have a enfermidade da pedra. Maybe she has it, too. Nobody can tell her what the stone sickness looks like, what causes it, or if it has a cure. She cannot avoid the Quintana.

The feeling of doom isn’t part of a panic disorder, it’s real.

Meanwhile, Scholastica has not moved a muscle. She remains serene, calm, comfortable in her niche of grimy clouds and attentive, chubby little bodies, fat fairies, babies with wings. She is thinking, however:

Lavinia, do not worry. You may be afflicted with something, but it’s not what you think. You are frightened because you don’t understand and I cannot save you by explaining. I can never explain what is happening to you, because if I try, you definitely will be in danger. You cannot follow me.

You need to listen to those voices and look at those black ant-like creatures that roam the stones of Compostela. You need to walk until your feet are numb and your mouth is dry, even if it’s pouring rain. You will feel trapped and panicky until you realize what is happening. You have no other choice.

I am telling you, although I’m sure you can’t hear me from where you are now, that you must follow two paths, both a kind of camiño de Santiago, a road to Santiago. 

You were brought here by the photographer whom you wanted to study because back in your country, which is her country as well, she was no more than a ghost. She was never recognized for what she did. You wanted to rectify that, and you will. I cannot allow you to do differently, or my name isn’t Scholastica. That is the first path and you need to remain faithful to it. (Note, please, that I belong to a faith, even if it is not yours.)

You were met here by other tides and currents, their flow one of tremendous force, but were given no map. In order to survive, you must draw your own map, name your streets, identify the voices. If you do not, you truly are doomed. There are arms reaching toward you, but you cannot respond to all their caresses nor cry if slapped. You are not a little girl.

I am keeping my secret, which might be your secret, as long as you live. How long that is will not be up to me.

Lavinia, unable to move now because her head is so full, hears another sharp noise outside, on the little Rúa do Medio where she’s staying. Rúa do Medio means the street that runs in between, the street that is neither up above nor down below. She’s in between. She should have seen that.

She thinks her saint, her Santa Escolástica, was trying to tell her something.

She knows now that her, their, secret is safe. That’s one good thing. The rest will come.