By Night in Chile Page 7

  performed my ablutions and put on my cassock and went out to the patio of the presbytery, and there was young Fr. Pietro, wearing a smarter cassock than mine, his left hand clad in a stout gauntlet of leather and metal, and in the air, in the square space of sky bounded by gold-colored walls, I noticed the shadow of a bird, and when Fr. Pietro saw me he said: Let’s go up the bell tower, and without a word I followed in his footsteps and we climbed up to the bell tower’s steeple, tackling that silent, strenuous ascent in tandem, and when we reached the steeple, Fr. Pietro whistled and waved his arms and the shadow came down from the sky to the bell tower and landed on the gauntlet protecting the

  Italian’s left hand, and then there was no need to explain, for it was clear to me that the dark bird circling over the church of St. Mary of Perpetual

  Suffering was a falcon and Fr. Pietro had mastered the art of falconry, and that was the method they were using to rid the old church of pigeons, and then, looking down from the heights, I scanned the steps leading to the portico and the brick-paved square beside the magenta-colored church, and in all that space, as hard as I looked, I could not see a single pigeon. In the afternoon, Fr.

  Pietro, one of God’s keen falconers, took me to another place in Pistoia where there were no ecclesiastical buildings or civil monuments or anything that needed to be defended against the ravages of time. We went in the parish van.

  The falcon traveled in a box. When we reached our destination, Fr. Pietro took the falcon out and flung it up into the sky. I saw it fly and swoop down on a pigeon and I saw the pigeon shudder as it flew. The window of a council flat opened and an old woman shouted something and shook her fist at us. Fr. Pietro laughed. Our cassocks flapped in the wind. When we got back he told me the falcon was called Turk. Then I took a train to Turin, where I visited Fr.

  Angelo, curate of St. Paul of Succor, who was also versed in the falconer’s art.

  His falcon, called Othello, had struck terror into the heart of every pigeon in Turin, although, as Fr. Angelo confided in me, Othello was not the only falcon in the city, he had good reason to believe that in some unidentified suburb of Turin, probably in the south, there lived another falcon, which Othello had occasionally encountered during his aerial forays. Both birds of prey hunted pigeons, and, in principle, there was no reason for them to fear one another, but Fr. Angelo felt the day was not far off when the two falcons would clash. I stayed longer in Turin than in Pistoia. Then I took the night train to

  Strasbourg. There Fr. Joseph had a falcon called Xenophon, with plumage of deepest midnight blue, and sometimes when Fr. Joseph was saying mass the falcon would be perched on a gilded pipe at the top of the organ, and kneeling there in the church listening to the word of God, I could sometimes feel the falcon’s gaze on the nape of my neck, his staring eyes, and it distracted me, and I thought of Bernanos and Mauriac, whom Fr. Joseph read and reread tirelessly, and I thought of Graham Greene, whom I was reading, though he was not, since the French only read the French, in spite of which we stayed up late one night talking about Graham Greene, without being able to resolve our disagreement. We also talked about Burson, priest and martyr in North Africa, whose life and ministry were the subject of a book by Vuillamin, which Fr. Joseph lent to me, and about l’Abbé Pierre, a funny little mendicant priest of whom Fr. Joseph seemed to approve on Sundays but not during the week. And then I left Strasbourg and went to Avignon, to the church of Our Mother of Noon, in the parish of Fr.

  Fabrice, whose falcon, called Ta Gueule, was known throughout the surrounding area for his voracity and ferocity, and my afternoons with Fr. Fabrice were unforgettable, Ta Gueule in full flight, scattering not just flocks of pigeons but also flocks of starlings, which in those long gone, happy days, were common in the countryside of Provence, where Sordel, Sordello, which Sordello? wandered once, and Ta Gueule flew off and disappeared among the low clouds, the clouds descending from the desecrated yet somehow still pure hills of Avignon, and while Fr. Fabrice and I conversed, Ta Gueule appeared again like a lightning bolt, or the abstract idea of a lightning bolt, and swooped on the huge flocks of starlings coming out of the west like swarms of flies, darkening the sky with their erratic fluttering, and after a few minutes the fluttering of the

  starlings was bloodied, scattered and bloodied, and afternoon on the outskirts of Avignon took on a deep red hue, like the color of sunsets seen from an airplane, or the color of dawns, when the passenger is woken gently by the engines whistling in his ears and lifts up the little blind and sees the horizon marked with a red line, like the planet’s femoral artery, or the planet’s aorta, gradually swelling, and I saw that swelling blood vessel in the sky over

  Avignon, the bloodstained flight of the starlings, Ta Gueule splashing color like an abstract expressionist painter, ah, the peace, the harmony of nature, nowhere as evident or as unequivocal as in Avignon, and then Fr. Fabrice

  whistled and we waited for an indefinable time, measured only by the beating of our hearts, until our quivering warrior came to rest upon his arm. And then I took the train and with a heavy heart left Avignon behind and traveled to Spain, and of course the first thing I did was to go to Pamplona, where the churches were maintained by other methods, which did not interest me, or were simply not maintained at all, but I owed my Opus Dei colleagues a visit, and they

  introduced me to the Opus publishers and the principals of the Opus schools and the Rector of the University, which is also run by Opus Dei, and all of them showed an interest in my work as literary critic, poet and teacher, and they invited me to publish a book with them, the Spanish are so generous, and

  punctilious too, for the very next day I signed a contract, and then they gave me a letter addressed to me and written by Mr. Raef, in which he asked How’s Europe going, what’s the weather like and the food and the sites of historical interest, a ridiculous letter but somehow it seemed to conceal another,

  invisible letter, more serious in content, and this hidden letter, although I couldn’t tell what it said or even be sure it really existed, worried me deeply.

  And then, after much hugging and writing down addresses and friendly, protracted farewells, I left Pamplona and went to Burgos, where I was to meet Fr. Antonio, a little old priest with a falcon called Rodrigo, who didn’t hunt pigeons, partly because Fr. Antonio was now too old to accompany the raptor on his forays, and partly because, after an initial period of enthusiasm, the priest had begun to have doubts about using such an expeditious method to be rid of birds which, in spite of their shitting, were God’s creatures too. By the time I arrived in Burgos, Rodrigo the falcon was eating only mincemeat or sausage meat and the offal that Fr. Antonio or his housekeeper bought at the market, liver, heart, scraps, and idleness had reduced him to a sorry state, similar to the state in which Fr. Antonio was languishing, his cheeks hollowed by doubt and untimely repentance, which is the worst kind, and when I arrived in Burgos, Fr.

  Antonio was lying on his bed, a poor priest’s Spartan pallet, under a coarse woollen blanket, in a big room with stone walls, and the falcon was in a corner, shivering with cold, wearing his hood, without the slightest trace of the elegance I had observed in his Italian and French counterparts, a wretched falcon and a wretched priest, wasting away the pair of them, and Fr. Antonio saw me, and tried to lift himself up on one elbow, just as I was to do years later, aeons later, two or three minutes later, when the wizened youth appeared like a bolt from the blue, and I saw Fr. Antonio’s elbow and his arm as skinny as a chicken’s leg, and Fr. Antonio told me he had been thinking, I have been

  thinking, he said, maybe this business with the falcons is not such a good idea, it’s true they protect churches from the corrosive and, in the long term, destructive effects of pigeon shit, but one mustn’t forget that pigeons or doves are the earthly symbol of the Holy Spirit, are they not? And the Catholic church can do without the Father and the Son, but not the
Holy Spirit, who is far more important than most lay people suspect, more important than the Son who died on the cross, more important than the Father who made the stars and the earth and all the universe, and then with the tips of my fingers I touched the forehead and temples of the Castilian priest and realized immediately that he was running a temperature of at least 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and I called his housekeeper and sent her to fetch a doctor, and while I was waiting for the doctor to arrive, for something to do I examined the falcon, who seemed to be freezing to death, perched on a lectern, with his hood on, and seeing him there like that I felt it was wrong, so after getting another blanket from the sacristy and wrapping it around Fr. Antonio, I found the gauntlet and took the falcon and went out on to the patio where I contemplated the cold, crystal-clear night, and I removed the falcon’s hood and said to him: Fly, Rodrigo, and after I had said it twice more, Rodrigo took flight, and I saw him rise, regaining his

  confidence, and his wings seemed vast and they made a sound like metal blades, and a wind like a hurricane sprang up, and the falcon veered from his vertical course and my cassock flew up like a flag in the grip of uncontrollable rage, and I remember at that point I cried out again, Fly, Rodrigo, and then I heard a sound of crazy, multitudinous flight, and the folds of my cassock covered my eyes while the wind swept the church and its surroundings clean, and when I managed to remove my own hood, so to speak, I saw bundles of feathers on the ground, the small bloody bodies of several pigeons, which the falcon had

  deposited at my feet, or within a radius of no more than ten meters from where I stood, before disappearing, for that was the last I saw of Rodrigo, he

  disappeared into the sky over Burgos, where there are rumored to be other falcons who prey on small birds, and perhaps it was my fault, perhaps I should have stayed out on the patio calling him, maybe he would have come back, but a little bell was ringing insistently from the depths of the church, and when the sound finally registered in my consciousness, I realized it was the doctor and the housekeeper, so I left my post and went to open the door for them, and when I came back to the patio the falcon was gone. That night Fr. Antonio died, and I celebrated the last rites and took care of the practicalities until the next day, when another priest arrived. The new priest didn’t notice Rodrigo’s

  absence. The housekeeper may have, but she looked at me as if to say it didn’t matter to her. Perhaps she thought I had set the falcon free after Fr. Antonio’s death or perhaps she thought I had killed the falcon according to Fr. Antonio’s instructions. In any case she said nothing. The next day I left Burgos and went to Madrid, where nothing was being done to prevent the deterioration of

  churches, but I had other business to attend to there. Then I took a train and traveled to Namur in Belgium, where Fr. Charles, curate of Our Lady of the Woods, had a falcon called Ronnie, and Fr. Charles and I became good friends, we would often go cycling together through the woods surrounding the town, each with a basket full of picnic provisions and, without fail, a bottle of wine, and one afternoon Fr. Charles even heard my confession on the bank of a small river that flowed into a big river, on the grass, surrounded by wildflowers and tall oak trees, but I did not mention Fr. Antonio or his falcon Rodrigo, whom I had lost on that crystal-clear, irrevocable night. And then I took the train and said goodbye to the splendid Fr. Charles and set out for Saint Quentin in France, where I was welcomed by Fr. Paul, at the church of St. Peter and St.

  Paul, a little jewel of Gothic architecture, and a funny thing happened one day when Fr. Paul and I and his falcon Fever had gone out intending to clear the sky of pigeons, but there were none, much to my host’s chagrin, for he was young and proud of his bird, which was, in his opinion, the finest of all raptors, and the church of St. Peter and St. Paul was close to the main square and the town hall, from which there came a murmur of voices that seemed to be annoying Fr. Paul, so there we were, he and I and Fever, ready and waiting, when suddenly we saw a pigeon appear from behind the red-tiled roof of one of the buildings on the church square, and Fr. Paul released his falcon, who dealt swiftly and firmly with that bird, which had flown across from near the town hall and seemed to be heading for the main steeple of the delightful church of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the pigeon, struck by Fever, fell from the sky, and a murmur of surprise came from the main square of Saint Quentin, and Fr. Paul and I, rather than beating a hasty retreat, left the church and walked towards the main square, and there was the pigeon, a white dove, bleeding on to the paving stones, and a crowd of people standing around it, including the Mayor of Saint Quentin, and a good number of sportsmen, and only then did we realize that the pigeon killed by Fever was the mascot for an athletic competition, and the athletes were visibly displeased or perturbed, likewise the local society ladies, who had sponsored the race and proposed the idea of opening the proceedings by releasing a dove, and the local communists were displeased too, since they had supported the ladies’ proposal, although for them that dove, now dead but flying free just a moment before, did not symbolize the peaceful sublimation of rivalry in sport, for them it was Picasso’s dove, a bird with a double meaning, so, in a word, all the good folk of Saint Quentin were upset, all but the children, who were searching wide-eyed for Fever’s shadow in the sky, and had gathered around Fr.

  Paul to ask pseudoscientific and pseudotechnical questions about his marvelous bird, and Fr. Paul, with a smile on his face, apologized to those present, and gestured as if to say, Sorry, anyone can make a mistake, and then he turned his attention to the young ones, whom he amused with answers that were always Christian in spirit if sometimes a little free with the facts. And then I went to Paris, where I spent about a month writing poetry, frequenting museums and libraries, visiting churches whose beauty brought tears to my eyes, now and then drafting a bit of my report on the preservation of buildings of national

  historical interest, with special emphasis on the use of falcons, sending my reviews and articles back to Chile, reading the books that arrived from

  Santiago, eating and walking around. From time to time, for no particular reason, Mr. Raef sent me a brief letter. Once a week I would go to the Chilean embassy to peruse our national newspapers and chat with my friend the cultural attaché, a very Chilean, very Christian, not overly cultivated fellow, who was teaching himself French by doing the crossword in Le Figaro. Then I traveled to Germany, toured Bavaria, went to Austria and Switzerland. After that I went back to Spain. I traveled around Andalusia. Didn’t think much of it. I returned to Navarre. Splendid. I visited the land of the Galicians. I went to Asturias and the Basque country. I took a train bound for Italy. I went to Rome.

  I knelt before the Holy Father. I cried. I had disturbing dreams. I saw women tearing their clothes. I saw Fr. Antonio, the priest from Burgos, who, as he lay dying, opened one eye and said: It’s wrong, my friend, it’s wrong. I saw a flock of falcons, thousands of falcons flying high over the Atlantic ocean, headed for America. Sometimes the sun went black in my dreams. Sometimes a very fat German priest appeared and told me a joke. Father Lacroix, he said to me, I’m going to tell you a joke. One day the Pope is having a quiet conversation with a German theologian in one of the rooms of the Vatican. Suddenly two French

  archaeologists burst in, very agitated and nervous, and they tell the Holy Father they have just got back from Israel with some very good news and some rather bad news. The Pope beseeches them to come out with it, and not to leave him in suspense. Talking over each other, the Frenchmen say the good news is they have discovered the Holy Sepulchre. The Holy Sepulchre? says the Pope. The Holy Sepulchre. Not a shadow of a doubt. The Pope is moved to tears. What’s the bad news? he asks, drying his eyes. Well, inside the Holy Sepulchre we found the body of Christ. The Pope passes out. The Frenchmen rush to his side and fan his face. The only one who’s calm is the German theologian, and he says: Ah, so Jesus really existed? Sordel, Sordello, that Sordello, the master. One day I decide
d it was time to go back to Chile. I went by plane. My country was not in a healthy state. This is no time to dream, I said to myself, I must act on my principles. This is no time to go chasing rainbows, I said, I must be a patriot.

  In Chile things were not going well. For me, things had been going well, but not for my country. I am not a fanatical nationalist, but I do sincerely love the land of my birth. Chile, my Chile. What on earth has come over you? I would sometimes ask, leaning out of my open window, looking at the glow of Santiago in the distance. What have they done to you? Have my countrymen gone mad? Who is to blame? And sometimes, walking down a hallway in the college or the newspaper offices, I would ask: How long do you think you can go on like this, Chile? Are you going to change beyond recognition? Become a monster? Then came the

  elections and Allende won. And I stood before the mirror in my room and tried to formulate the crucial question, which I had saved for just that moment, and the question refused to emerge from my bloodless lips. It was absolutely unbearable.

  The night of Allende’s victory I went out and walked all the way to Farewell’s house. He opened the door himself. How old he looked. He must have been about eighty by then, or older, and he had stopped touching my belt or my hips each time we met. Come in, Sebastián, he said. I followed him into the living room.

  Farewell was making phone calls. The first person he called was Neruda. He couldn’t get through. Then he called Nicanor Parra. Engaged too. I collapsed into a chair and covered my face with my hands. I could hear Farewell ringing the numbers of four or five other poets, without any luck. We started drinking.

  I suggested he ring up some Catholic poets we both knew, if that was going to make him feel better. They’re the worst, said Farewell, they’re probably all out in the street, celebrating Allende’s victory. After a few hours Farewell fell asleep in his chair. I tried to put him to bed, but he was too heavy, so I left him there. When I got back to my house, I went straight to my Greek classics.