Bells

    She put down the book and her notebook, but kept hold of the fountain pen in her hands, moving it from one to the other, sliding it between her fingers, as if there were words itching to come out of the nib, or even out of her fingers. She was a bit disoriented, uncertain about her feelings. More uncertain than she would like, because what she had been reading was not new to her; she had read the pages often, some more than others.

It was too late to go today, but tomorrow she would visit the place mentioned in the poem by Rosalía de Castro, published in 1863. The problem, as she was quite aware, was that sixteen decades ago the place had been markedly different. There had been few, if any, factories or commercial locales. The roads would have had no asphalt. Transportation would have involved horses, oxen, and feet (sometimes bare, according to the economic situation of the person to whom the feet belonged. 

Of course the houses and huts where people resided would form part of the landscape. They would have existed in symbiotic relationship with grasses of a hundred shades of green and grape arbors and tree tops that added another hundred shades. It was like somebody had stitched the region with every possible shade of green from the embroidery thread section of the fabric store. In and around those threads were sparkles of mustardy gold, ochre, Naples yellow, amber…

She didn’t need to return to the site to recall the canvas that awaited her, to know all these colors would be there, despite the invasion of the contemporary economy, the construction that seemed to take out its rage on the land. A silent rage to match the silent submission of residents who were losing their grip on the Val da Mahía. However, something was urging her to go back.

The verses she had read just before closing the book were to blame. Of the many poems in Cantares Gallegos [Galician Songs], one in particular haunted her:

    Campanas de Bastabales,

      Cando vos oyo tocar,

      Mórrome de soídades.

[Bells of Bastavales, when I hear you chime, I die of loneliness.]

It was that I in the poem that should not be more than an I on a page. Yet she had been struck by the manner in which that I became her: when she read the lines, she felt like she was the one listening to the church bells that tolled when it was time for mass, a wedding, a baptism, a funeral. When I hear you… yet she never had actually been there when the throaty gonging took place. She had never seen anybody enter the little igrexa [church] of San Xulián de Bastavales.

The poem had been the reason for her first visit, she thought. Over the years, she had even taken the book with her to reread it in situ, alongside the little place of worship that overlooked the Mahía Valley, the valley that had changed so much, that had been destroyed to a great extent. Still, she had made up her mind to go.

The drive the next day had been short - maybe twenty minutes on narrow, winding roads - and she had left the car in the modest lot in front of the bandstand where she had never seen a band of any kind playing, and thus no area residents had ever been dancing when she had gone to Bastavales. Yet something clung to the rippling breeze and clawed at her memory. 

She knew she was not the I in the poem who was recalling the chiming. But what happened when she read the verses out loud? Why did it seem as if she had written the poem? She had written little poetry in her life, and almost none in Galician. She had translated a fair amount, but she was not happy with any of the English versions she had found or done herself.

Then she made the mistake of giving in. She opened the book to the page that was marked and read, for the hundredth time:                 

      Cando vos oyo tocar,

 Campaniñas, campaniñas,

 Sin querer torno á chorar.

[When I hear you chiming, little bells, dear bells, I can’t help myself - I cry.]

And she did. There were no bells, except for the ones in the poem, bells that rang out seemingly of their own accord, without the help of human hands. There was no adjective describing the tone of the bells. The sound was simply present, in the air, and might be mellow but probably wasn’t, because the I who heard them in Rosalía’s verses was crying.

But no. Perhaps the first listener wept for another reason. Like she was weeping now, 160 years later. Was it because she was looking out over the embroidered valley and overcome by its beauty in 1860? Or was she somewhere else, not beside the little igrexa but further up the hill where the vegetation grew richer, was undisturbed and was reclaiming a couple of once-fine stone homes? Rosalía’s I  was quite mysterious in that sense. Where was this I located when she heard the bells? What did she miss?

She looked again out over the valley. It wasn’t really that large, yet the name was Bastavales, which is usually taken to mean wide valley lands. Green, golden, partially destroyed, clinging to life in an industrial society. She moved her gaze far to the left, then proceeded to turn her head, slowly, to the right. A tennis or basketball court at mid-distance was painful to see. Cement structures were also painful. The I of the poem had been sad for other reasons.

It was a modest valley with remnants of traditional small fields or leiras, a banana plant or two, and a good amount of lemon trees. The view is not spectacular, not like the mammoth landscapes of Colorado or the Pyrenees, but its intimacy is nevertheless spectacular. One cannot exactly love the Grand Canyon or Roncesvalles, but one can love Bastavales in the Val da Mahía. The poem was proof of that.

Against her better judgment, she opened the book again to the poem, diving her thoughts between the page and the landscape. She was still unsure of where the I of the poem was physically located, but she was drawn to try out another translation of the lines:

      Cando de lonxe vos oyo,

 Penso que por min chamades,

 E das entrañas me doyo.

[When I hear you from afar, I think you’re calling to me, and I hurt deep inside.]

She was feeling unsteady. The air was moving, the afternoon sun was glinting perfectly on the curly tops of tall cabbages, the valley was hushed, as if listening to her read, and listening for the bells. But she didn’t know if she read silently or was saying the verses aloud.

She broke her concentration, feeling uneasy, and walked to the other side of the church. There was an atrium and a number of niches, and beyond that, a funny little stream that rushed off the green slope, splashing into a centuries-old carved rock that momentarily held it like a cup before releasing a smaller rivulet into another stone recipient. After that, the frisky water continued its downhill trek past the church and its little wall, down to a narrow road with a cruceiro, a stone cross that was probably from the eighteenth century. Like many cruceiros in Galicia and Brittany. One of the newer art forms, though.

Declarations of life and joy in a landscape dented by mistreatment and lost to so many who were forced to leave it as emigrants in the nineteenth century. The history of departures and no returns was written in many of Rosalía’s poems and she knew it. She felt this although this was not her landscape, her language, or her past.

It didn’t matter.

Epilogue

Bastavales has her in it now, has the hooks of its mournful verses in her memory. She has understood that the I is not to be found in any one place, just as views and landscapes do not remain unchanged. We carry some things we see around with us, we are drawn to return, to recite, to breathe the fluttering yellow scent of fruit and vine over and over, until we can never leave.

We stand near little igrexas with saints in funny dress. We inspect oddly-engineered fountains and count the stone slabs of old graves by the wrought-iron fence. We look out over the tiny and vast Mahía of Bastavales (whose name might be a myth). We hear the high-pitched voice of an elderly woman who was Rosalía’s second cousin and another voice, very refined, mellifluous, perfectly controlled. We know that often the I can be defined by how it adheres to its place and how it defines that place, what words it chooses. How it measures time, too.

Dust to dust.

                     ——

      Dóyome de dor ferida,

 Qu' antes tiña vida enteira,

 Y oxe teño media vida.

[Pure, aching pain consumes me, for once my life was whole and before me, and now I have only half a life.]

[Wounded pain slices me inside, because once I had a whole life, but now only half is here.]

[… today my life is cut in two.]

[… slashed…]

Post-epilogue:

Breathtaking is in the eye of the beholder. When looking, use a poem for a lens. 

You are the eye and the I.