PART I

Sernanselle, November 24, 1935.

         My Dear Son Ramón:

         I hope with all my heart that you are in good health. For the moment we are all doing well.

         You probably know that Xacobe de Dominga over beside the hay barn by the Outeiriño lot put in four posts to make a grape arbor, cutting off the front side of our place, so that very day I got three men along with your uncle Rosende and I suggested that he should clear away our front side. So that’s what he did and we put in four posts of our own, and so the front side of our place stayed clear.

         “María, is the oven hot enough yet?”

      “It’s not hot yet, mother. Not yet. But it doesn’t need any more fire. The green toxo, the gorse that was brought from Valranco, is enough. Now let it burn down until the coals are ready.”

      “We have a lot to bake.”

      “That doesn’t matter. Listen to me and keep going, because I’m in even more of a hurry. I want to finish by the time Rosende’s order is ready and take the letter to Cancela da Maceira.”

      The woman has placed the enormous portion of dough she’s kneaded for two empanadas and the bread on the wooden kneading board that rests atop the flour bin. Using a spoon made from boxwood, she spreads out a layer and fits it into the bottom of an empanada pan. While she’s dictating the letter to María, she takes the frying pan from the hearth and spreads the zaragallada – a mixture of fried garlic, onion, parsley and other ingredients that is now a beautiful golden color – on top of the bottom layer with the same spoon, made from boxwood. It’s a generous combination of onion and pepper with a precious pinch of saffron. She extends a generous amount of tranchos, sardines, on top of the mixture, sardines from the wide xeito nets, that Micaela de Rianxo had brought at dusk. On top of the sardines, another layer of dough. Then skilled hands seal it around the edges of the pan, although not with a fluted ridge, because the fluting is for the empanadas made from wheat flour.

         Now I have to say that I’m very upset with you because it’s been more than three months since I’ve gotten a letter, and you must know that what really would make me the happiest person in the world would be to get a letter from you to cheer me up.

         I will tell you that the wall on the side of the old stable where the wind hit it is in bad shape and I’m afraid it’ll collapse all of a sudden and destroy the orange tree and the cherry tree you planted and that are doing so well now. If you don’t tell me I should do anything different, I’m going to have part of the wall taken down, so it won’t hurt the trees.

         Well, Ramón, in the picture you sent us in your last letter there are two people next to you, one on your right and the other on your left. You should tell me if they’re neighbors of ours or not. Some say they are and others say they’re not and we’d like to know for certain.

         The oven was finally hot enough. The woman pulls the burning embers from the floor of the oven with the hoe-shaped utensil. Then she runs the short broom made from a laurel branch around the inside of the oven. The green leaves on the branch burst in loud sparks. She inserts the empanada with the paddle and places some embers inside the oven. The colorless smoke fills the whole house with a gentle warmth that seeps through the clay tiles of the roof.

         Around here they’re saying, Ramón dear, that by February Antonio da Couta is leaving there, so maybe you’ll decide to come with him, maybe you’ll be here by Easter, it’s been a long time since we spent Easter together in Padrón.

         Now the woman, while the first empanada is baking, quickly prepares the other on the board. She uses the same cornflour dough and the same fried mixture. And she goes on dictating the letter. But this time she fills the empanada pan with baby eels. María writes and looks at the headless snakelike bodies that old Rosende caught in the stream in Sernanselle and that still look like they’re squirming in the empanada pan. María imagines the starry call that lures them from the distant depths of the Atlantic like the spindle-shaped rivers to Albariña here below, and takes them back again during the dark gold night, in cosmic rhythm, to the original sargasso uterus where they spawn and die in dark shadows.

         You probably know that this coming Sunday the banns for Ramón Viturro and Encarnación da Monisa will be completed, that it’s almost time for the first frost, that we went to the bee colony over by the old hay barn and this year we only have two hives with bees.

         I hope you will answer soon. Best wishes from your Aunt Teresa and Uncle Rosende and the rest of the family who are all in good health.

         All my best from the one who loves you so much.

         Your mother and your sister María.

         The woman takes the letter and holds it out so she can read it while the second empanada is baking. Finally she signs at the bottom of the letter. María puts it away and hurries with it, together with the empanada with the eel filling, across the small square, heading toward Rosende’s house, close by here in the lower village.

         “Aren’t you taking a torch?”

         María answers from outside.

         “The moon is bright this evening.”

*     *     *

Old Rosende is dozing on a bench beside the simple hearth.

         “Mr. Rosende! Oh, Mr. Rosende!”

         “Who is it?”

         “It’s me, María.”

         Mr. Rosende smiles when he spots her on the other side of the door’s small window and opens it for her.

         “Look here. I’ve brought you the empanada straight from the oven. It’s the one made with baby eels.”

         “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know, girl. The things your mother bakes have a fragrance that travels ahead of their arrival. Many, many thanks to both of you. And tell her that as soon as I’m able, I’ll go to the reed bed at Codesidos to get some sticks for the Outeiriño vines. I promise to take care of the posts. She doesn’t need to call anybody to do the planting… I…”

         “Please, don’t worry, sir. How is Miz Teresa?”

         “Fair to middling.”

         “Has she eaten anything?”

         “Some porridge this morning. Let see if she’ll get up now to have some of this empanada.”

         “I hope you enjoy it.”

         “God willing.”

         María leaves the shack where old Mr. Rosende and old Miz Teresa – crippled, disabled, bedridden – live. She heads along the path to the lower village, the one that leads to Cancela da Maceira. Night has fallen and María’s eyes hold the embers, the coals from the oven’s ledge, to protect her from the light frost. In the middle of the dark path a beam of light appears, illuminating the direction of Cancela da Maceira. The light is waiting for her.

         “Good evening, Camoiras!”

         “Good evening, María. Are you going to Roiz’s place too?”

         “Yes, I am. You know, another of my mother’s letters.”

         “Poor woman!”

         “I don’t think she’s a poor woman. She just doesn’t want to see.”

         Cancela da Maceira is the gateway to Sernanselle. It’s where the road that comes from Valonovo enters and continues further up to the square by Souto, the heart of the village, where the road ends. Cancela da Maceira is also where the road from the lower part of the village and the footpath to Agro da Veiga join.

         The Roiz house, the only one past the road, outside the village, can be reached by the stone path edged with boxwood that covers dense metal fencing, vine-covered and shaped into an attractive bower. The house rises upward, or maybe just rests, beside the Cancela da Maceira.

         “She just doesn’t want to see. And the bad part is that she gets the dates confused now. She mixes up things from the past.”

         “What’s happening is… You smell like cornmeal empanada!”

         “Well, we don’t make any from wheat flour.”

         Camoiras, perched on a pine-tree branch, rests his hands on María’s shoulders.

         “Have you got something against the people who use wheat?”

         María moves away from the weight of Camoiras’ huge hands.

         “No, I don’t, and you know that. Even less against you. My mother and I will always be faithful to the Union. But you, Camoiras, no matter how much wheat you have, no matter if it’s heaps and heaps, your mouth is always going to be watering for the empanadas made from cornmeal.”

         “For yours.”

         “I don’t bake. Yet.”

         They knock on the door of the Roiz house and the outside light goes on immediately. Manoela, Roiz’s wife, opens the door.

         “Come on in.”

         “Manoela, I can’t stay. My mother’s waiting for me.”

         Amaro suddenly comes up to the door and pulls María inside. Roiz is waiting for his friend and fellow member in the Union of Milk Producers of San Xián de Laíño. He says hello to María, who hands him the letter. Roiz heads into his office with the letter in his hand, followed by Camoiras. María and Amaro go toward the living room.

         “Turn that music down, Amaro,” says his mother from the kitchen.

         The music is Vivaldi’s “L’Autunno,” and Amaro plays it for María as if it were a precious gift, a joyful feeling he wants to share. The gramophone, a Grande Symphonie model, has a horn disguised in a simple cherrywood art-deco cabinet, where a radio has also been installed. Amaro knows what to do and sets the dial at seventy-two revolutions.

         In Roiz’s office, crammed with books, newspapers and magazines, two cigars are lit with a silver benzine lighter that has the Three Great Lights discreetly engraved on one corner. Roiz had brought it as a souvenir from the Vallée in Paris, from his last trip through Europe.

         “Have you decided yet?”

         Roiz plays with María’s letter, making it jiggle between his fingers.

         “I’ve decided, Camoiras, I’ve decided. It was time to break, to finally break with all of that. I thought a lot about it. We grew up there, Camoiras. We went to school there. Buenos Aires was everything. But now the plan was beginning to seem like a distant, twisting vine that was growing weaker year by year and its dying grip was releasing its hold on my heart. I made up my mind and sold it all, all of it, shares and property, before the vine could completely die on me and the business turned into a bad deal that belonged to somebody else. I didn’t want to serve as secretary to that.”

         “You did the right thing. One of these years I’ll probably decide to sell, too.”

         “Who knows? The money was secure and was worth something there, as I don’t need to tell you, but we’ve already been back in Galicia for more than fifteen years. My boy, even though he was born there, is already settled in here. And Manoela never had second thoughts. Things might not look certain, but I’m one of those who has complete faith in our country and in the Republic. This house, Sernanselle, our Union, our Triangle, Camoiras my brother, the Agrarian Society…”

         “And what’re you going to do here with so many millions? Share them with all the folks who’re shouting long live Communism? Put them in the alms box? Or in the donation box by the Abelán Cross on the way to Teaio?”

         “I’ll buy a horse at Easter time. Like yours or even better looking. No. You know our Union’s growing, people are satisfied… We have to keep looking ahead. We have to start to package milk, the way I saw them doing it in Flanders and the Netherlands. We’ve got so much to learn! And then there are the balls of homemade butter and cheese, which is good, but how many hours does Pouquiña have to beat and churn in the clay pot? And when Pouquiña dies, who’s going to do the churning in the Roxo house?”

         Roiz pokes at the brasier. The smoke from the cigars fills the office with its high ceiling.

         “The same goes for all the members. We have to make good-quality cheese and butter, but it has to be financially profitable. What do people get for a dozen balls of butter and cheese that we take to Santiago or Vilagarcía on Sundays?”

         “Four bits.”

         “That’s nothing if we compare that amount with the work and the time it takes to make them. A mere pittance. The same people, working in a factory, in the same amount of time, with a lot less effort, would produce ten times more. And they’d earn ten times more.”

         “I understand. You’re going to organize a dairy factory in Padrón.”

         “No, Camoiras. I’m not going to do anything outside the Union. Our little Union.”

         Roiz Bustelo stops fiddling with the letter María had brought and puts it on top of others, similar to it, that he keeps under the bust of Manuel Murguía that was made in Céramica Celta of Cesures. It sits to the left of one of Rosalía de Castro and another of Curros Enríquez.

         “I’m also not going to do anything outside of Sernanselle, Laíño, or Dodro Vello. I’m going to propose we build the factory at the next Union meeting. I’m going to put up the money to back it. What do you think?”

         “Well, you sure were doing some thinking while I was doing nothing at the thermal baths! If you think it’s a good idea, I’ll go along with it.”

         “And the others, the members, how will they react?”

         “They’re happy, very happy, with the Union, Roiz. And they’ll go along with the idea, they’ll be very pleased, especially if the idea comes from our president.”

         “Yes, I think they’re pleased, too. I think a lot of them are seeing a light they’ve never seen before. They’ve given up the sheep and fattening up the oxen – oh, our famous Laíño oxen! They didn’t feel bad about that. Now they want flat lands, they destroy hillsides to create pastures, the flatland is being cleared and everything is as clean as a whistle. What about the cows? Did you see how they’ve changed in the last five or seven years? Gallástegui is doing a lot for the country with his Mission. We should really be grateful to him! But here we have to be smart about it. Supposedly the best milk was from the Swiss cow, the Schwitz, as you know. Well, do you recall the native blond cow that Pepe da Bernalda brought from the fair on the twenty-ninth of the month at Estramunde? He was bragging while everybody else laughed at him that it was a special breed? Well, it’s producing more milk than any Swiss cow or any mixed breed in the whole village. Ismael da Pedra is absolutely green with envy. It’s incredible. Our own blond cow with horns, wandering about the hillside or pulling carts and plows, competing with the best milk producers…!”

         Roiz wipes away some tears. He has chronic conjunctivitis, which he’s treated with drops of atropine sulfate for some years now. He’s following the advice of Don Antonio, the Señorito, the Master, who looked it up in the Manual for the Practical Doctor: Eye Ailments, translated from Paul Lefert, in an edition from 1897.

         “Go ahead with the factory, Roiz. That would definitely be a great blow for Álvaro Trigais and the members of the priests’ Cooperative.”

         “The Catholic-Cooperative people aren’t our enemies, Camoiras.”

         “No, they’re comrades.”

         “They’re controlled by a couple of caciques, local bosses, and they do have the blessing of His Most Revered Eminence, who was their guest of honor, highly regaled, when they inaugurated their headquarters. Those lapdogs! Those from here, from Sernanselle, who don’t belong to the Union, are backed by Don Antonio’s lack of initiative. They’ll fall when the Master falls.”

         “The Master, the Master… The Republic is going to do away with the masters very soon.”

         “Calm down. Don’t be stupid. Don Antonio belongs to the other kind of Señoritos. True, the political situation is getting more and more complicated. That’s the only thing that concerns me. But I still believe in Saint-Just and his people, in spite of their deviousness. You remember? Remember those nights in this very room, the room of Lost Steps, before we defeated the Pillars?”

         Roiz goes to the window and looks out in the distance toward the river and the wetlands, under the bright moonlight. He looks at the harsh, heavy smoke from his cigar. His eyes water up again.

         “The young fellows who’re running from the draft and going to Buenos Aires have opportunities and very different ideas. Few of them want anything besides money, and the more easily they can get it, the better. But we… This is my place. That’s why I sold the business in Buenos Aires. I was born on the lane by Suatorre. I built a new house at Cancela da Maceira. My place is here, and here, where I live, is where my money has to be, too.”

         “Speaking of wine. Have you put the spigot in the barrel yet?”

         “Oh, Camoiras. If my life were like yours… I’d be going here and there, all over. Today you arrived from Mondariz with a lady friend, tomorrow you’ll be heading to Carballiño or Caldas with another…”

         “No, here Mr. Roiz’s trips are taken on a starvation diet to San André de Teixido, chanting the religious litanies with the local church ladies.”

         “You have time and opportunities for everything, Camoiras. And you still haven’t sold the business in Buenos Aires. In the village here your only goal is to compete with the Master. Oh, and then there are the ladies! That’s how you’ve created a string of fatherless children in the parish. It’s amazing! Any day now you’ll sleep with Ventura the Falangist’s wife, or with Álvaro Trigais’ – if you haven’t already, you son of a bitch!”

         “Look who’s talking, Mr. Priest of Carracedo.”

         Roiz Bustelo gets up from his chair and goes down to the wine cellar, using a stairway inside the house. He comes back with a glass pitcher full of white wine.

         “This albariño wine you make – I heard they wouldn’t even take it for free at the fair in San Martiño de Francos the other day.”

         “Look who’s talking. Go on, drink it, and don’t complain. It’s not albariño. I made this white wine using the dark gold Catalonian grapes from beside my door, plus two baskets of white loureiro grapes.”

         No, the wine isn’t albariño. Roiz’s orchard, Roiz Bustelo’s enormous, perfectly rectangular orchard, is lined along the wall by wood supports. It has been producing for just five years. He had the vines brought by a fellow from Isorna, a good friend of Unamuno’s, that’s Gallástegui Unamuno, who belonged to the Biological Mission of Gandarán in Pontevedra. It’s the loureiro variety, it’s albariño along the southern side. On the north and along the east there are caíño and espadeiro grapes. Catalonian varieties, true, that quickly grow thick and lush over the grape arbor adorning the house and growing perpendicular to it in a golden ratio. In the front part of Roiz’s orchard, which faces the path by Cancela da Maceira, where his stables and garage are also located, there are several types of apple trees – the ones that gave their name to the field, Maceira – and peach trees, plum trees, repinaldo apples grafted onto the stock of black plums… and a strong, straight walnut tree grows beside the path. The walnut tree was the first one Roiz Bustelo planted, even before he’d finished the house and purchased the fields where his enormous orchard is now. It’s as big as those of the Master and Camoiras. He planted it after reading “The Walnut Tree” years ago. It was one of the stories in the series of A carón do lar, Beside the Hearth, that brother Manuel Lugrís Freire, Servet, published under the pseudonym Asieumedre in A Nosa Terra. It’s the thing Roiz has always loved most of all that’s growing in his orchard. In the back part, along the eastern side of his house, most of which is occupied by a sun porch, the orchard continues with countless scattered fruit trees: oranges, mandarins, lemons, pears, pear apples, big, dark orraca pears, medlar fruit… an island of trees sitting on the pasture island. Only in a small area near the house do Roiz and Manoela have some small plots where they plant a few vegetables. And further on back beyond the mixture of the walled orchard, four ferrados, ninety square feet each, of corn. The corn is the native variety, however. Roiz Bustelo still plants the local corn.

         “Who wants some bread?”

         Manoela summons them all into the kitchen. Roiz and Camoiras go immediately, taking their wine. Amaro and María continue talking and listening to the music on the gramophone, enthralled. Bread is in the oven and the dough that is behind the oven door is shiny, hard, and has risen high. There’s a fire in the hearth, but the heat is coming from the oven and the iron stove. There’s a trivet over the fire in the hearth and on the trivet sits a frying pan. Manoela is holding a big plate in her left hand and with the right is moving the pan back and forth with the handle, to finish the cooking. She covers the pan with the plate and flips a slab of bread onto it. The fragrant delicacy is now on the table. Atop the fried dough mixture are torrados, fried bacon, as beautiful as slabs of stone cut skillfully into geometric slices. They’re all at the point of perfection, where the bacon is still oozing a bit of grease and the toasted skin on the side crunches on the palate.

         “It’s a pity to ruin this work of art, Manoela. Let me go home and get my camera.”

         “Go on. Eat, Camoiras, it’s just a little dough I took from the bread and put together with a few pieces of meat.”

         “A cake, it looks like a cake. Apparently those years of schooling in Santiago didn’t make you forget how to cook.”

         “They taught me a lot more. Shut up and eat. María! Amaro! Are you coming?”

         “Roiz, the truth is, a man of your status ought to have a maid.”

         “I’m the maid here. The Master has one. And your sister Ilduara is yours, although you don’t deserve her. It’s clear that Sernanselle has a lot of would-be Señoritos who are still old-fashioned in their behavior.”

         “Miz Manoela, the modern day Señoritos, who have less learning than Don Antonio, try to show more consideration for other people and we’re anticlerical and anti-authorities.”

         “You’re priests and bosses of a different sort. Young people! The young folks coming up are the only ones who’ll be able to do anything!”

         “Appearances, it’s all appearances. Be careful. The revolution starts at home. Before they start with me or Don Antonio, they’ll divide up your orchard among the people living in the lower part of the village and they’ll build the community center right here.”

         “Camoiras, if they did that, as long as they don’t decide to cut my grape vines, I suppose you’d attend the meetings,” Roiz joked.

         “Who knows? Maybe I’d even join the revolution. Except I’d only pay the dues if they called on Manoela sometimes to cook for the banquets, I mean the festivals, the foliadas.”

         The door to the living room opens and the music of “L’Autunno” comes from the gramophone. María doesn’t stop to have any bread. She’s in a hurry.

         “I’m going with you,” says Amaro.

         “No, it’s not necessary.”

         “I’m going with you. I have to leave, too. It’s on my way because I’m going by the Master’s shed. And I’ve got a flashlight.”

         Amaro is sad, silent, still, in the doorway as he watches Camoiras and María walking together, stepping on the dry leaves that are rustling to the music of Vivaldi beneath the grape arbor.

*     *     *

Night has fallen and the moon has lifted its shadows. The moonlight shines in the direction of Souto field, down the road, on the high walls of the houses of Camoiras, the Master, Bernalda, Reboiriñas, in Couto and Lampai, and on the shacks and steaming hay barns made of small, rough stones. The moon illuminates the cold swaying of Don Antonio’s American palm trees in the wind. They are an odd coat of arms for his powerful lineage, that many see as the coat of arms for all Sernanselle. Around and up above the village, the moon shines on the hillside of Cal de Barcas and the hill of Cal de Martiño, also called Contemunde. To the south the moon spreads out over the whole valley, where dim lights are visible in some of the tiny villages scattered there. And off in the distance, breaking the line of the horizon, the moon turns the big river into a mirror. The thin line of the Ulla, looking deceptively straight as it flows through the wetlands at Laíño and further on, swirling around the islets as far as Catoira, in the direction of Arousa. Ghostly, weary dories come and go from the sea.

         The dark path from the lower village, covered like all the village paths by grape arbors that now litter the ground with fallen leaves, shows off its charcoal-like mud, dried out by sun and the autumn winds from the north. The little owl and the barn owl hoot. A frost is near. The north wind is biting. Camoiras’ light shines into the tunnel.

         “Did the Portugués finish doing the paving in the Netos’ corral, María?”

         “He’s almost done, I think. But the Trilla family has spoken for him next. Did you need him too?”

         “Yes, I need him too, but to pave this whole path, from here, from Cancela da Maceira, Pociño, Suatorre, Carroleiro, through the lower village and up there to the Susavila house, along the Focos lane, in the direction of Xei and Chisca.”

         “That’s quite something for a village, even if it’s Sernanselle.”

         “Not at all. With covered ditches for water and the liquid manure from the stables. Here and in all the villages of Dodro Vello.”

         “A lot of houses have mousía, a strip of land, along the paths.”

         “If we start doing it, the people will end up agreeing. What good does the mousía do them? As long as we respect the vines and the margins by the walls… Of course it might be necessary to raise a vine or two a little more so the carts hauling gorse and firewood or hay can get through.”

         “Who’ll pay for it?”

         “The Concello, the Town Council, will pay when we win, María.”

         “The baths at Mondariz must have really done you some good, the way you’ve come home, with all those fancy dreams. When we win, when we win… When who wins?”

         “Don’t you know who we are? It doesn’t matter, because you definitely know who the others are. Everything’s moving along now so we can win very soon.”

         “We’ll never win.”

         The Sar River barks at the gate of the Roxos’ house. The tunnel beneath the grape arbor hasn’t been finished, but has an open spot in Suatorre where the moonlight shines on the locust trees and hay barns and the dips in the lane by the Penseiras field, where the light from a hanging lamp fades away, off toward the mill at Rúa. Then the tunnel is back and the path is visible. The wind from the north blows the grape leaves lying atop the dry, hard mud around and makes the dry leaves on the piles of black corn, the restebo, rustle. They’ve been placed there to dry, near the houses and stables, the hay barns and orchards with stone walls around them, like a square leather belt.At Bieitiño’s house people are saying the rosary. They’re almost done. They’re either saying the rosary or Father Astete’s catechism.

         “When do you go to the mill at Soutela?”

         “Whenever you want. Do you want the night shift or the day shift?”

         “For me it’s better…”

         “Go on, go on. You certainly have a place to grind. You’re a Master now. Now, like Don Antonio, you have a new mill with a water trough of its own and good water from the cistern at Fontenliño.”

         “Yes, I do. But if you knew how fondly I remember the times at Soutela… You weren’t even born yet.”

         “My mother remembers too, not so long ago either, when she went in the summer with the fol, the sack, on her back, to Antequeira or Rialiño, where she still goes, or when the boatman from Tallós came and she went across to the electric mills at Campaña. That’s real grinding. And poverty. And slavery.”

         “All the Union people can grind free at my mill. The Master always asked for the maquía, the twentieth part of the flour.”

         “Now during the winter everybody makes do with their turns at Soutela or Rúa. Nobody likes to owe anybody a favor. And in the dry season? Where are the Union or Cooperative members going to grind their corn? The Señorito built the mill almost on top of the hill. If he doesn’t have water in his well at Morada so they can do the grinding, no mill is going to grind. And people either pay one twentieth in his or they have to go pay at Rialiño or the electric mill at Campaña. If the water belongs to everybody, like with the irrigation system, the Master shouldn’t have special privileges.”

         “Don’t talk to me now about privileges, dear, because what I’d like…”

         “Is to go to the romaría, the pilgrimage, like everybody else.”

         María stops a little before the corral of her house. The southern wall gleams in the moonlight. She has to back up to the door to a hay barn.

         “What do you want, Camoiras?”

         Camoiras stares down at María’s coal-black, defiant eyes, surprised. He turns off his flashlight without thinking. He moves closer to María, but doesn’t answer her. Silence. The owl of Valranco is just as scary. But no, he doesn’t answer.

         “María! Oh, María! Mariíña!” Her mother calls her name.

         “Take care, Camoiras.”

         A spongy blackness erases María’s figure on the other side of the house gate and the wall that was about to collapse and has been repaired. Camoiras continues toward Souto with the light turned off and hears the farewells of the rosary sayers as they leave Bieitiño’s house. He imagines how the lights and smoking torches are spreading out along the paths of the lower village. The north wind makes the grape vines, shining in the moonlight, flutter above the odor of soft manure and the fall weeding. Camoiras keeps going. The little owl hoots from over by the Cal de Martiño field or the one at Contemunde. There might be a frost. When he reaches the threshing area, the eira, he greets the silhouettes of the hórreos, where the grain is stored, and the cabana, the last of the more primitive grain bins in Sernanselle, perched on four slender posts, with ragged, twisted stick bindings and a top that has come unraveled, empty now, about to collapse.

         When Camoiras reaches the Master’s shed, on the dividing line with the upper village, he notes the fragrance of caña, cane liqueur, and he’s drawn toward it. The Señorito’s shed is a half circle. It has the only circular or curved wall made of rough stones in all Dodro Vello and it’s the only one that still has a thatched roof. It’s enormous. It contains a small storage area and a wine press. It’s where he keeps his car, plows, old frames for hives, farm implements, and countless small items. On the side of the path where Camoiras is walking there’s a door made of two big sections of wood, one of them with carvings. The shed is attached to an old house whose wall cuts into the curve. The house adjoins a stone threshing floor that faces Souto. It has some stonework. When the Master’s father built the new house, the house with the palm trees, this one became a stable for the livestock, four cows, a horse and lambs, and a garage for the car. Camoiras pushes on the door, looks in, and enters.

         “So the ghostly Santa Compaña is out tonight!” The cañeiro, the whisky maker, greets him. He’s the cañeiro from Catoira.

         “Oh stop it, stop it, cañeiro,” answers Camoiras, a bit uneasy. “How long before you’re done?”

         “I won’t finish tonight. I’ve got two batches done and I’ve got at least two more to go. Hopefully by noon tomorrow. Do you have a lot for me?”

         “My job isn’t as big as Don Antonio’s, but this year Roiz wanted to make his with mine and there are also some baskets of bagasse from another neighbor who wants to join in.”

         The pieces of split oak burn slowly on the dirt floor and are the only light that provides illumination for the shed. Small yellow flames lick at the bottom of the rusty pot, set right in the middle, on a huge metal trivet where the blue smoke rises, caressing the buttocks of the big pumpkin-shaped pot, and the dough used to seal the metal joints. It frees itself from the handles, flows together again, thickening again, swirls unfettered about the beams of the imperfect, blackened straw ceiling, pokes its way along the barra, the storage area, and disappears, fleeing through the southern window.

         The pots of distilled mash, stacked in a corner to be carried out and spread around one of the fields of the planting area, aren’t steaming now, but they’re still warm. Their vapor has dissipated, leaving a sharp alcohol odor that has seeped into everything. The bagasse that’s waiting to be distilled is in baskets covered with cloth sacks beside the press that crushed it. The wagon pushes its tongue at an angle against a beam in the storage space.

         The long tube of the still drips into a zinc bucket. There, weary, sitting around the fire on stumps that serve as stools, Xacobe de Dominga and Mariño are conversing with the whisky maker. They half sneered when they saw Camoiras enter. They belong to the Catholic Cooperative. The Portugués has just left.

         “Would you like to taste it?”

         “What’s the proof?”

         “Over sixty.”

         “Well, all right. Give me a drink.”

         Camoiras puts the tangue under the spigot that’s over the jug that is full of water and heats the spiral tube where the alcohol vapor condenses. He waits for it to fill so he can try it.

         “That burns the gullet, cañeiro!”

         “It still burns a little, that’s true. But it tastes good, you know. There’s no grape like the Catalan.”

         “The Catalan grape. This is what it’s good for. It produces a lot, doesn’t rot… But it’s no good for wine,” adds Xacobe de Dominga.

         “No, it’s not for you to wash your feet with,” Mariño pipes up. Then he tosses his clever response toward the fire, still laughing, amid asthmatic wheezes.

         “Ha ha ha! Goddammit!”

         “For wine there’s the best one comes from the land of the Portugués,” suggested Camoiras. “Such good soil, good soil! Soil like no other anywhere. And oh, the wine!”

         “Have you tasted it?”

         “I’d be tasting it every Sunday and holiday if I had someone to get it for me.”

         “Where’s the Portugués from, anyway?”

         “He’s from away, Mariño, far away. Good land, but far away. Wine ripens there like nowhere else.”

         “But where is it?”

         “His name isn’t an accident, you know.”

         Camoiras puts his tangue under the spigot again and fills it up for another drink.

         “They’re… they’re the Terras do Demo, the Badlands!”

         Xacobe de Dominga doesn’t even crack a smile.

         Camoiras takes another sip and has just finished grimacing, with the usual cough, when the door that connects the shed to the stables and garage suddenly creaks. Out of the darkness, dressed in a black overcoat, dipping his head down to avoid hitting the door frame, Don Antonio the Señorito emerges. He walks slowly and silently over to the pot.

         “What’s the proof, cañeiro?”

         “Still sixty.”

         “I don’t want it any lower.”

         “Don’t worry, Don Antonio.”

         “You’re not going to finish tonight. They just told me that it seems Reboiriñas has had another attack. Do a good job for me with the batch and tell anybody who bothers you to get lost. Do you have enough rye grass?”

         “Ha ha ha! What’s here is enough for the two baskets that are left. Wouldn’t you like to try it?”

         Don Antonio walks out through the door that Camoiras had left ajar and heads toward the upper village. In rushes a cold gust of northern wind full of grape leaves, stiff, wrinkled, hard, and dry, that Camoiras cuts off by closing the Dutch door with the latch.

         “Don’t close it, Camoiras, or we’ll roast in here. Just slide the bolt.”

         Camoiras goes to the stump where he’s been sitting and pulls a sky-blue kerchief from his jacket. The men, amid sips and more sips, go back to their conversation.

         “He’s been sick for a while.”

         “Yes, Reboiriñas has been sick.”

         “He came back from Buxán married.”

         “He did. He’s got a child in Imo, too.”

         “A real champion.”

         “Yep. More of a champion than Rial the Archer, who beat Xan Quinto, Robin Hood, over by Salvanxe. One day he got smart with the Civil Guard near the cruceiro, the stone cross at Supomares.”

         “And they let him have it. He pointed out a neighbor’s house to them, using the front end of the plow.”

         “He was the front runner, he sure was. Other than Xulio do Roxo, he was the only one who could throw bolos past the Soutela mill.”

         “No way.”

         “No, eh? I saw it with my own eyes. Dammit all!”

         “Nobody plays bolos, nobody bowls any more.”

         “They do in America.”

         “Well, in Catoira they play, too. And speaking of mills, we have ones that run using water from the sea as well as others with wind.”

         “In Laíño there was one that ran on wind, too.”

         “And the Master’s mill – that one’s special, with such a high trough and such a long aqueduct, and pardon me, Camoiras, it’s brand, spanking new and really pretty.”

         “Sernanselle has a road and cars like the one Mr. Camoiras here has.”

         “And there’s a doctor, too, like Don Antonio. They don’t have one in Catoira.”

         “Speaking of important people, there’s Don Luis Sernanselle, Don Antonio’s brother, may he rest in peace. Professor at the Institute, head chaplain in the Army, priest in the Cathedral, and if you don’t believe it, go read what it says on his gravestone that’s in a prominent place in the cemetery.”

         “Catoira’s no small village, you know. It’s got a train, a sawmill, and a naval manufacturing industry…”

         “Say, Mariño, you learned to read with Don Luis Sernanselle one August when he was here, didn’t you?” Camoiras interjected.

         “I did, yep. I did learn a little. What the hell!”

         Camoiras passes half a tangue to him and keeps goading.

         “They say it was in Latin.”

         “I don’t remember any more. I wasn’t even ten years old.”

         Mariño stares at the fire.

         “‘Think, Mariño my boy. What you have to do is think.’ That’s what Don Luis used to say to me.”

         Mariño’s eyes give off blue sparks. The cañeiro brings more oak pieces over and stokes the fire. Xacobe de Dominga throws a sideways glance at Camoiras.

         “And what book did he use to teach you?”

         Mariño takes a drink from his tangue.

         “One called the Official Bulletin of the Archbishopric of Santiago de Compostela, volume XL, 1901.”

         “You had quite the newfangled things in Sernanselle!”

         Mariño, hurt by the whisky maker’s jab, gets up suddenly and starts walking around the still, outside the circle where the others are squatting. Then he sits down, takes a drink, and looks at the fire. He recites haltingly amid the smoky air:

         “Poetry from the end of the century, by Pope Leo XIII:

         Cultrix bonarum nobilis artium

         Decedit aetas: publica commoda,

         Viresque naturae retectas,

         Quisquis avet, memoret canendo.

         “Can’t make heads nor tails out of that!”

         “An illustrious century dies with the cultivation of useful science. Let whoever desires the good of all and the discovery of the forces of nature celebrate it with song. What most concerns me are the errors of the century that is dying. Those affect me deeply and make me shudder. Oh the shame! When I look back, the monuments of its disgrace seem so numerous!”

         Mariño coughs and asks for more caña. He gets up and recites like a man possessed, possessed by Don Luis in the library of the Master’s house, gesturing with his hands and expanding his pacing area to include the whole shed, driven by a series of bad aromas, tangue in hand:

         “Do you hear it? The horde of crazed fanatics, who think they are wise, knows it is spewing forth unholy words and insists on making crude matter into something divine. They are mad, and look down on the celestial origin of our race and, inventing monsters and chimaeras, confuse man and animal in a single, impossible beginning.”

         Mariño sits on the big stone weight of the wine press and rests against the curved log, a shiny black spindle that raises and lowers the feixe trabón, the lever.

         “Oh! In what ignominious abyss the furious impetus of pride thrashes about! Heed, ye mortals, the fearful precepts of God! Only He is life, unfailing truth and the only true path that leads to Heaven. Only He can give earthly mortals the few years of life they desire.”

         Mariño turns, staggering in the flames and shadows of present times.

         “Yes, Goddammit, that’s how it is!”

         The cañeiro was speechless. Xacobe nods his head, over and over.

         “That’s absolutely right.”

         Camoiras congratulates Mariño, chuckling:

         “That Don Luis sure was a good teacher, Mariño! But you… how could you possibly learn all that?”

         Camoiras doesn’t know what to say after that.

         “I know the whole book. He left it for me and before the next year’s resteba harvest I had to recite it for him.”

         At that moment there’s a knock on the door and before the cañeiro can open it, Don Antonio has lifted up the latch. The north wind and the moonlight are secretly stalking them. Don Antonio looks at Xacobe de Dominga and then at Mariño.

         “You, Xacobe, saddle up my horse and go for the priest. Hurry. Reboiriñas is dying. You, Mariño, it’s time you trundled off to bed. We’ve got a trip to make tomorrow.”

         Don Antonio takes off his black overcoat, tossing it onto the side of the cart, and goes over to the fire, rubbing his hands. He grabs a stump and sits down.

         “What’s it at now?”

         The whisky maker, who’d been distracted, hadn’t measured for a while.

         “Wait just a minute. I’ll test it.”

         He takes the glass and fills the alcoholmeter.

         “It got away from me, sir! It’s up to sixty-five!”

         “That’s all right. Maybe you have to heat the water in the jug more.”

         “I’ll get the buckets and we’ll go to the fountain at Souto right now.”

         Camoiras and Don Antonio are alone now beside the pot sitting over the fire. Don Antonio rinses the tangue in the water from the jug and puts it under the spigot to fill it.

         “If you fellows stay here all night, my bucket will never get full.”

         The Master rolls a cigarette. Camoiras takes out a Chesterfield. They both light up with the same ember.

         “What’s wrong with Reboiriñas?”

         “He’s at death’s door.”

         “Don Antonio… “

         “What are you getting at, Camoiras?”

         Camoiras is tense and notices something dark in his tone.

         “I meant to say that… You know, sir, that the Livestock Insurance Company of Sernanselle is doing well since Ismael da Pedra founded it a little while after he came back from Buenos Aires. And all of us villagers are signed up for it, the ones in the Union as well as the ones in the Cooperative. So I just wanted to tell you… I haven’t said anything to Roiz yet, but the minute I tell him he’ll agree with the idea.”

         “All right, Camoiras, what are you trying to tell me?”

         “It’s just that before I went to the baths at Mondariz last week, one day Fernando o Lampai showed up at my door. The winch-run thresher we’d bought when me, Roiz, Ismael da Pedra, Manoel de Vicenta, Mourelle and Río were in Buenos Aires was getting worn out and was out of date, because now they make them with big engines that do the work faster and with less effort… Please understand me… You, sir, and the members of the Cooperative insist on the old way as far as the threshing goes. Those of us in the Union will definitely be doing the threshing with our machine when the second planting comes around.”

         Camoiras takes a drag on his Chesterfield.

         “I’m not going to get into the milk thing. The Livestock Society works and the community threshing machine can work too. I wanted to suggest to you that we all buy the machine, regardless of whether we’re from the Union or the Cooperative.”

         “Some people still prefer the grain that comes from the old threshing system.”

         “I can’t believe you’d say something like that. The thresher uses much more of the grain and blows it clean. It’s obvious that the best path for farming lies in mechanizing the labor.”

         “Where did you learn that?”

         “The blind man from Gondar taught me.”

         Camoiras throws his cigarette butt into the fire.

         “Do you think you’d ever see six men in the heat of the day, doing the threshing for a whole week as if they were slaves?”

         “You see it everywhere. It was what they always did.”

         “You, sir, do not travel much.”

         “You travel for me.”

         Camoiras is silent. He feels tense. The dark shadows creep up around him.

         “Sorry, young fellow. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

         The Master takes a long swallow.

         “Reboiriñas is about to die. I’m distracted and can’t think about those things.”

         “Think about it. The machine will fit without a problem from Souto along the path to the threshing area.”

         “Who pays for it?”

         “Each villager pays according to the number of ferrados, the plots he sows.”

         “What if today he plants one and tomorrow half of one? And what about the price for the rental?”

         “A general fee would be established and in addition one would be paid for the amount planted. Da Pedra keeps the accounts. In the Mutual Society nobody complained, not ever, about the irrigation system. What do you say?”

         The Señorito gets up and goes to his overcoat, on the car’s bumper. When he reaches the door to the shed, before dipping his head, he turns toward Camoiras and snaps:

         “There’s a lot of immigrants around here now, and you all come with fancy ideas. You, Roiz, da Pedra… Reboiriñas was in America, too. He was in Cuba the whole time, in the Cuban War…”

         Camoiras has his dander up now, and challenges those remarks:

         “We were in America and a lot of people from the village are there now. Your grandfather was the first and made his son into an important, educated man. Many others followed him. That’s where you got most of what you have – more than you need – and your medical career. No matter what you or I or anybody says about poor Reboiriñas, sure he might have been in the Cuban War, but he’s one of the few who stood up to the Civil Guard regarding the foros, the contracts that established territorial rights.”

         But Camoiras fills the tangue from the spigot and just before it overflows, he throws it against the car. The tangue hits where Don Antonio had put his overcoat. He takes out another Chesterfield and stands up. Stumbling, he picks up the tangue, then the cañeiro comes in and restokes the fire. Camoiras rinses the glass in the jug.

         “Time to be going.”

         “That Don Antonio, cañeiro. What do you make of him?”

         “What do you mean, what do I make of him?”

         “A man with his profession, with no children, and now that his brother Don Luis is dead, all his family’s in Buenos Aires… What’s a fellow like him doing here in the village, rotting away? Why didn’t he set up his medical practice in Padrón or Santiago? He doesn’t charge any of the villagers and he doesn’t have many patients from outside here.”

         “How should I know, Camoiras? But he does have a lot of land.”

         “That’s true. Most of it is rented out. And wine. And honey. He must have two hundred beehives. But that’s no life for a doctor, for a man with a profession like his.”

         “He’s attached to the land and a woman… maybe he had a girlfriend here.”

         “I never heard about any.”

         “I could be wrong. Time to get going, Camoiras.”

         “Just one more swig, whisky maker!”

         There’s the sound of a horse’s hooves in the stable and soon after Xacobe de Dominga comes in.

         “Do you have much to go for the next batch?”

         “Still a ways to go. Go on home to bed. I can manage.”

         “Well, I’ll go then. The priest is on his way and I want to join the Viaticum.”

         The cañeiro slips the latch closed on the door and tosses three pieces of wood on the fire. He pours the liquor from the bucket into a glass jug, a demijohn, using a funnel, then lies down on the rye straw, looking for a soft spot to sleep.

         “Go on home, Camoiras. It’ll be your turn tomorrow. You have to leave if you want to come back.”

         “I’m going, I’m going.”

         Camoiras doesn’t take his eyes off the fire. He lights another Chesterfield. He drinks and is drunk now. The sticks of wood and a few walnut stumps burn noiselessly, in sad, heavy silence. The cañeiro is almost asleep. Camoiras’ head is bobbing. Tiny light notes from the bells of the Viaticum move along the path from Souto that goes by the Master’s shed, on the north side. They’re drawing near in the night that speaks of genuflection, waiting for what is about to happen, terrible. When the Viaticum reaches the shed, it penetrates stone and straw, and the little bell wakes both the cañeiro and Camoiras, who are startled. Signs of the priest and the dull noise of people heading toward the upper village.

         “What the hell! Dammit all! It’s impossible to get any sleep in this village.”

         “That’s for sure!”

         Mariño comes in laughing and joking and sits down by Camoiras. He asks for a tangue and fills it.

         “And that Reboiriñas fellow? Was he old? Is he old?”

         “He’s just really up in years.”

         “That’s the last of the Master’s whisky.”

         “So what? He’s got a lot more. Give me a cigarette, Camoiras. I’ve got something for you, something good.”

         “What is it?”

         Mariño can’t manage to get the cigarette to touch the ember and burns himself. He shakes his hand and waves it around. The ember falls on the storage area and a terrible fire starts, immediately burning the shed down, the curved shed and the only thatched roof. But no, the coal falls harmlessly on the earthen floor.

         “I’ve got… Hey, dammit! I’ve actually remembered the whole version of the Responsibilities of Catholics Under the Current Circumstances: Fragment of the Pastoral Letter from November 9.”

         “From the same book?”

         “It’s the only book, Camoiras. Everything’s in the Official Bulletin of the Archbishopric of Santiago de Compostela, volume XL, 1901, because since there are so many people loyal to the tricolor flag of Protestantism, Liberalism, and the Masons, it is the absolute duty of all the children of the Church to act to defend truth, justice, and sanctity, which are so threatened by those savage enemies.”

         Mariño speaks without pausing, not lecturing, as if he were praying in a low voice.

         “We must respond to the arrogance of those who are haughty and because of their false science look down on the authority of the Church with our humble profession of faith. Those who have the audacity to proclaim a State without God, or who subordinate Religion to Politics and the Church to the State, should be met by our humblest obedience to the Church’s divine authority and practice of the precepts of the divine teacher. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s. And those who adhere to impious vows, working unceasingly to demolish the work of Christ and the end of Catholicism with all its institutions, we must oppose them with the freedom of God’s children, that condemns such diabolical servitude and such unholy ideas. We must oppose, with invincible force, the Masonic teachings, never forgetting the words of Christ! Et portae inferi non praevalebunt.”

         “If you’re not going to leave, at least speak so I can understand you.”

         “Heaven and earth might disappear, but the words of Christ will never die. Empires and kingdoms might disappear, as will dynasties and constitutions, uprisings and revolutions, but the Church of Christ will not disappear. It was founded by the right hand of God, who resists and destroys all the forces of Hell.”

         Exhausted and dazed, Mariño falls off the stump and continues his monologue from the ground, and by now he is unintelligible. The cañeiro, almost asleep, picks him up and lays him in a corner atop a heap of dry grass from the storage area. Camoiras can’t get up.

         Meanwhile, the Viaticum is drawing near. The priest knocks on the door. The whisky maker doesn’t open it. The priest calls out. The whisky maker doesn’t want to answer.

         “Leave, Camoiras.”

         “I’m going, I’m going. Just one more swig because I’m heading out…”

         He sets the tangue under the spigot.

         “Did Reboiriñas die yet?”

         “How do I know? Get a move on.”

         The tangue overflows and Camoiras doesn’t take it away.

         “I’m not being mean. Can’t you see how late it is?”

         Mariño was mumbling something. Camoiras tries to go over to him with the overflowing tangue in his hand. He gets as close as he can so he can hear Mariño’s fading voice.

         “That’s why we insisted to our beloved parish priest about the need to teach the tenets of the Christian doctrine through catechesis, that is, using questions and answers according to Father Astete’s catechism, which is the one our diocese adopted.”

         The cañeiro disassembles the parts of the still and pours the mash that’s been distilled in a heap, steaming and pungent.

         “And since we distributed thousands of copies of this catechism, we insist that the heads of family who already have the prior habit of saying the rosary in their homes at night, we insist that after they finish they should read some pages from this little book so that those who already know the doctrine will think on it again and those who don’t know it will learn it…”

         Camoiras is dozing, the full tangue in his hand, sitting next to the rye grass where Mariño is lying.

         The cañeiro cleans the big belly of a pot, places the rye straw under it, on top of some twisted trunks from old grape vines, and fills it with the bagasse from the wine press. Camoiras dozes, his head nodding. Mariño wheezes asthmatically, as if he were about to die.

         “Another very efficient means of avoiding contamination by the errors of our times for which the press has gotten so adept is to avoid in whatever way possible having people read the bad things that are printed, only allowing them to read newspapers, journals, or pamphlets with healthy ideas, absolutely moral ones, and even better, ones of true piety. It’s better to have no newspaper at all than to have a bad one, even if it has a lot of news and a wide circulation. It’s impossible to calculate the evil being done by the press that’s produced by the members, the members, the members…”

         The cañeiro sets up the still again and covers the joints with dough. He’s still waiting for the cabeza metílica, the onion head of the still, which he pours out on the path. He looks at Camoiras and Mariño before going out. Vivaldi’s “Autumn,” the drunks of the adaggio.

         The cañeiro doesn’t take long. He brings Micaela back with him, Micaela of the tranchos, the sardines from Rinlo, the Rinlo near Rianxo, who’d already agreed to meet up with the cañeiro and sometimes slept in a nearby hay barn. Micaela comes up into the storage area. The cañeiro stokes the fire and climbs in there too. In a little while the spigot starts to drip. The cañeiro climbs into the nest, the love nest where the lovers enjoy themselves the rest of the night while Reboiriñas lies dying. Camoiras catches a glimpse of them, then hears something, then laughs softly, remembering Xesusa de Lis, the lady friend with whom he has a two-year-old child and with whom he’s just spent a week in Mondariz. Remembering Lucía de Sóñora, with whom he has a five-year-old son. Remembering Tubía, Caneda… and remembering María, María, María. Then he falls asleep.

*     *     *

Daylight still hasn’t appeared in the southern window and Elisa a Ferreira, the Master’s maid, comes in the door of the stables carrying a bucket of milk, without seeing where Camoiras and Mariño are, off to one side.

         “Reboiriñas is dead, cañeiro! Reboiriñas is dead!”

         Camoiras wakes up. Mariño is gone and Micaela has left for her hay barn or perhaps for Rianxo. The cañeiro is fast asleep in his bed of dry grass beside the door. He hasn’t heard her. Camoiras goes out and walks toward his house, up around the shed. It’s still dark, but at the end of the path there’s a faint glimmer of daylight and the village birds are singing. He walks over the dry, faded grape leaves. The north wind chills him to the bone.

         When he passes the Rías shed, a goat comes to him through the open door of the corral, followed by a little girl. The girl’s mother, Tereixa, is milking in the stable. The goat stops, licking one of Camoiras’ hands. In the stable there’s the whispering sound of milk spraying from teats. The girl holds finely crumbled corn in one hand. With the other hand, now that the goat is still, she pulls on its teats to moisten the bread. Camoiras waits. The goat produces a little milk. The girl licks her hand, getting it all over herself, and a little one-year-old crawls toward her from the kitchen door with a twig of boxwood in his mouth.

         Camoiras reaches his house and stands silently in the lower gallery. His sister Ilduara comes over to him.

         “I’m going to finish milking. Do you want some chocolate?”

         The whole east side of Camoiras’ house, lower floor and upper level, is a beautiful galería, a balcony with windows, the only galería in Dodro Vello made from cement, in the modernist style, He lights a cigarette and listens to the chiming, the tolling of the bells at San Xián de Laíño. At the same time, a coughing Roiz also hears them, at just about daybreak. To Roiz it’s like they’re ringing the bell with the head of the dead man himself, with the head of his dead friend Reboiriñas. While the death tolls are ringing, the Catholic-Cooperative car approaches the village. The Union car that goes to Vilagarcía already left a while ago because it has to go to Araño to get the milk and then to Asados. In the Souto field some men and women are waiting with overflowing buckets, looking toward Camoiras’ windowed balcony and talking about Reboiriñas’ death. The Master is getting into his horse-drawn carriage with Mariño by the threshing area in front of the stable. He’s going to the distribution of the restebo, the second planting corn, in San Xián de Laíño, where he also has an hórreo, a grain bin, five sections long.

         The car for the Catholic Cooperative leaves. The Master’s car leaves, The General Motors T Truck of the Union that goes to Compostela starts up in the garage and descends along the paved slope as far as Souto, where the motor is left idling. Daybreak hasn’t come yet. The villagers, men and women, are arriving and all they’re talking about is the death of Reboiriñas. Camoiras watches, smoking a Chesterfield, seeing how Amante Caride, Formariz, the driver, measures the members’ milk and calls the number of liters and the measurements out to María. He watches how María writes it all down in the book for the weekly accounts. The bells toll. She keeps the books and payment records and dispenses the milk in the lower level that the Cooperative Union of Milk Producers of Laíño owns, next to the Porta Faxeira, one of the entryways to Compostela. Ilduara arrives with the milk and last to arrive are Roiz’s son and his mother. Manoela brings a pail of milk, and he has his geography and history books. Amante Caride, Formariz, María, and Amaro leave Sernanselle in the car.

         Camoiras goes up to the upper-level galería while Ilduara prepares the chocolate and puts on the record “Dandy,” by the Morocho, Gardel, keeping the volume low. Por qué pasás por niño bien. Why do you want to look rich. The Union’s black General Motors T Truck has disappeared along the turn at Emproas. The sun comes up. The open doors of the Mansamino hórreo, behind the arrowroot by the fountain at Souto, reveal the perfect shafts of green corn set to dry facing north. Has nacido en una cuna de malevos, calaveras. You were born to a bad family, good-for-nothings. The bells toll. Overhead, Camoiras accidentally discovers some V-formations of passing birds, ducks and herons that unravel the sky still gray above the Señorito’s palm trees. And there, in the distance, the river, the Ulla, in the middle of a chaotic thin fog. He imagines the clean white sails of the dories, of the baleiro fishermen that are coming down from Porto, seeking refuge in the Arousa sea. The bells continue their death toll. Entre la gente del hampa no has tenido performance. You haven’t made it as far as the underworld is concerned. Mariño’s wife hurries past the Souto field because she’s heading to Padrón to get Reboiriñas’ coffin, which she’ll bring back on her head, resting on a rolled cloth. Camoiras hears the distant alalá song of the sailors from Porto, Cesures, Ponte, Infesta, or Requeixo. The sun, about to rise between Miranda and Meda, will trace an arc that dips toward the south, toward the earth, the opposite of what Camoiras always saw in Buenos Aires and which he had never got used to seeing there. The bells toll. They will not toll for me. He glances at the Café Tortoni, full at that hour of smoke and mate, and doesn’t recognize anybody there. And, his mind wandering, Camoiras thinks he hears a popular folk song, floundering in the wetlands:

         Estreliña do luceiro,

         a da moita claridade.

         Vaise o día, vén a noite,

         vaise a nosa mocidade.

         Little evening star,

         the one with so much light.

         Day passes, night comes,

         our youth departs.

PART II

It’s an afternoon for planting in the Senra of Sernanselle. The weather is unsettled. It’s the turn for the field that has lain fallow to be used for the second harvest and it’s already been worked with a wooden plow, manure has been laid down, and it’s been planted. The intensive farming custom in that area has made for three types of fields, three types of corn: sweet or gabea, early or temperán, and second planting or restebo.

         The sweet corn is always for ditch planting, but the hired workers from the hills who used to come down for a few pennies and food to plant it with huge hoes, hoes for use in ditches, nobody in Sernanselle hires them any more in an auction as if they were slaves, on Sundays in Padrón. They were pushed out by the B-50 N1 from Ajuria eta Aranzábal that Reboiriñas was the first to drive. After the corn, the hoed field produces several crops and types of grass for hay. It produces the best corn, it doesn’t need irrigation, and now the select hybrids from the Grange in Coruña and the Biological Mission in Pontevedra that the Agrarian Society of Dodro Vello or the Cooperative Union brought fill the carts in the cornfield, and fill hórreos and cabanas, the more primitive grain bins, with basketsful.

         The fields of early corn have that variety one year and restebo or second-harvest corn the next. The plain of Sernanselle borders Tras de Rego. The early corn is planted after the sweet variety. The wooden plow isn’t used here either, but the native corn survives. After the corn, grass grows, first for harvesting and after that for grazing.

         The second-planting cornfields are the ones used for the stubble, the ones for mowing with a sickle. After harvesting the wheat, barley, or the oats recently introduced as fodder, they plant a typical red corn, also a select variety, the last of the season. Afterward, they produce hay or more oats. The cycles alternate and every two years the same field produces corn and wheat, rye or oats, and maybe even another crop of oats.

         Planting afternoon in Sernanselle, in the Senra. We’re in the early corn field that produces a second planting. It’s already been plowed, fertilized, and sown. The wooden plow for planting is the king of them all: first it scrapes the hard soil and then it digs the long furrow. Old Rosende labors in front of the yoked cows. At the rudder of the handles, with the mouldboard in the trench and the rudder raised, the blades sunk into the soil, is the woman, María’s mother. She controls the digging of the rows. María follows behind, hoeing the rows of furrows and covering the seeds.

         “There’s something coming, near the big island, Vacariza.”

         “What kind of sail does it have, Rosende?”

         “It’s pretty small.”

         “Is it flapping?”

         “It must be!”

         “It can’t be the only one.”

         “Wait just a minute, until I stop. Probably more are coming. The tide’s rising.”

         “Daughter, let your uncle and me finish hoeing. Hurry. Go to the house, grab a bucket and a basket of hay because Silvestre’s boat is coming. The sickle has been sharpened. Move along now. You can already see the shadows along Outeiro de Mos.”

         “What should I get?”

         “What should you get? Cockles from As Sinas and green grass from our marsh. To carry it, put more in the bucket than in the basket, girl. Don’t dawdle. We’re going to bake today.”

         “You bake, mother. You do the baking. I’ve got the meeting of the Syndicate.”

         “You have what I say you have.”

         “We’ll see about that.”

         “Well I never! And what if Silvestre doesn’t have any cockles?”

         “Don’t wait for the boats from Porto to come. It’s getting late.”

         María hurries anxiously toward the village. She’s glad to stop hoeing the meadow. It’s no short distance to the bank of the river and she has a lot to carry back, but María feels drawn to the wetlands. She grabs the sickle, the cord, the basket, the cloth that serves as a head cushion, and the pail.

         “Amaro! Hey, Amaro!”

         “Where are you going, María?”

         “I’m going to the wetlands. Want to come with me?”

         “Yes, of course I do.”

         Amaro and María leave Cancela da Maceira and descend the slope of the road, go around through Emproas, Balteirón and Medeiros, take a shortcut down through Supomares, through Degareu, toward the village of Rial de Lagoa. They pass Valonovo and the road to Padrón toward Ribeira, leaving the machinery of the sawmill to the right.

         Then suddenly, in Vesada, the world changes when they reach the flat region, the plain that’s always green, the wetlands of Laíño. They’re in the valley area now. They go along the path by the stream at Cabo de Valouta, the one in Sernanselle, tracing its curved line. At first they see some people spread about, with baskets or using a sickle or building a planned labyrinth of irrigation ditches, framed by little willow trees that have been cut to serve as boundary markers, lost in the immense center of the world. Afterwards they come to the large common square of Dodro Vello, where cars have never gone, and the shadow from the east draws curved shapes like waves over the grass, the tall and budding grass, and on the rozada, the cleared area that nobody ever painted. Nobody.

         Silvestre’s horn blows into the wind. María and Amaro run toward the sea, or the river, and swirling winds from the tide that is rising and the taste of sea mist hit their faces. They fall on the reeds, they fall on the clover, they get up on the milkvetch. They hug, then fall again, they fall on the clover, they join together in an endless moan.

         Unsettled weather. Silvestre’s horn sounds hoarse at Redondo, It’s echoing in the wind, the most famous horn along this shore, announcing he has his hatch full of cockles. He heads into Imo. Seated, María and Amaro watch the boat’s sail cutting sharply through the canes and reeds along the shore. Silvestre is a sailor from the village of Reboiras in Dodro Vello. He’s abandoned his dory de escarba, with its overlapping sideboards, that he’d made himself for this larger boat, the buceta that he navigates through the Tallós marsh to anchor it in the Seixo reservoir, near his village. He’d bought it second hand in Carril.María starts to gather grass on the shores of the river of Sernanselle. Amaro looks at the clouds of ducks landing here and there, the lapwings on the shore of the islands by Vilar, partridges, coots, crested grebes, fleeting marine crows. A royal heron, completely motionless, ascends gently, perching on a clump of grass, and goes upstream with the movement of the tide toward the pastures of Campaña. An otter roots in the Pinal irrigation ditch by Brañiña de Riasós. More sails arrive. They come along the starboard, running close to our shore,disembodied forms, crossing over reedbeds and cane breaks, the main and felucca sails, sails of a giant wooden sloop, wood fromthe woodsmen of Cesures at Ponte de Iria, that can’t compete with the easterly wind. They lower the sail, the sailors lower it and pull as hard as they can on the net tied high on the mast, leaping onto the marshy shore, forward toward the towrope.

         Silvestre’s horn blows far up ahead of the baleiro fishermen. He reaches our marshy shore where some people have gathered, waiting with buckets and baskets. Yes, he’s got heart-shaped cockles from As Sinas, as big as fists. He arrives quickly, guiding the buceta with its full prows toward the Tallós marsh, trying to reach the field in the Lestrove pasture by daylight, where the full white sails, from San Xoán to San Martiño, travel in solitude amid the corn.

         María has filled the bucket and continues gathering grass along the shore of the marsh. Amaro looks for one of the escovellas that are supposed to be in the wetland. They are bottomless pools that fill up and disappear with the tide, pools that he has never been able to find, the pools of the three mouras of Castro de Mouras, the Dark Ladies, awaiting their return. But he sees, like he has before, that the petroglyphs of Bouza Abadín are right on the stretch of field, twelve furrows between the marsh of Sernanselle and the top of the Castro, where the sun is now setting. The grass has a fragrance it has never had before. There is no light mist. The tide is rising. The ducklings are making noise in the water and on the grass.

         “Can I help you lift the basket up?”

         María’s basket is an oak branch fitted to a narrow board half a meter long, with an indentation at each end.

         “Do you know how?”

         Amaro grabs an armful of grass and puts it on the bottom of the basket. He grabs another. He tries to put it in. He tries to get it balanced correctly. The basket falls. Now the dories and the alalás of the baleiro fishermen from Porto are passing on, indifferent to all this. Aturuxos, high-pitched, happy shouts.

         “I can’t do it!”

         “Watch.”

         María puts the bunches of grass together, interlocking them and weaving them onto the ring. She pushes the last ones into place hard… She slings the sickle and the cord over one shoulder.

         “Did you find the escovellas?”

         “Are there any?”

         “Yes, come with me.”

         Then back along the paths through the grass, taking turns in the chase, like two children. They startle ducklings, frighten herons and coots, cry out, run into water that’s flooding the grass, and they run deep into the wet area, in the deep marsh.

         “The tide!” cries María.

         The river is about to overflow, and María imagines the basket and pail drifting away in the marsh of Sernanselle. Almost. Amaro with the pail and María with the basket on her head start to run, frightened. The sea is rising. The marsh has already overflowed in some parts of the path, and the current has formed quite a river. Night is coming. At some points they can’t cross, but it could be worse if they stray from the path, a lot worse. They have to take off their shoes and roll up their sleeves. Night and tide are burying the wetland on María’s and Amaro’s heels. A flock of herons flies low along the stream above Sernanselle on the way to Bouza Boa.

         Finally they reach the valley and stop, gasping, to rest at the Valonovo sawmill, whose machines are shut off. It’s completely dark.

         “Do you know how to swim, Amaro?”

         María sits on the warm stone of their resting spot.

         “Yes.”

         “I don’t. When are you going to take me to the baths at the Sea of Vigo?”

         Amaro comes around in front of her and pulls María toward him by the waist.

         “Whenever you want. Didn’t you go to Rianxo this year with the Roxo family?”

         “I went, but you weren’t there.”

         “There must have been others.”

         “There were, but you weren’t there.”

         They kiss slowly.

         “It’s really late… it’s really late…”

         For the return to Sernanselle they forego the shortcuts and there at Valonovo they choose the road that the City Council of A Coruña built not long ago, due to the political and economic pressures from Roiz and Camoiras. María with the basket and Amaro with the bucket go up the slope at Lameiriñas without stopping to rest at Arcai. They go on, with Tarrío on their right, with its abandoned manor house. Dogs are barking. At the crossing by Brañeiro they turn toward the slope near Chenlo. They hear a car. The headlights are visible as it goes toward Tarrío. It’s the Master, who passes them by, indifferent. The horse doesn’t snort or whinny on the climb.

         They keep going. They go past the Capela do Leite, the Chapel of Milk, the one of the Virxe do Bo Parto e do Leite, the Virgin of Good Birth and Milk, through Suigrexa, Piñeirós, Fondo do Corgo, Costa do Covelo, Fontenlo, then catch sight of Sernanselle from Supomares. They come through Medeiros and Balteirón and just as they take the turn at Emproas, exhausted, they run into the lights of a car. It’s Camoiras’ 1932 Chevrolet. He stops alongside them without turning off the four-cylinder motor. Dressed in a gray suit, Camoiras gets out.

         “Grass and cockles. What a mixture!”

         He helps María put the basket on the ground.

         “I’ve got to speak with you two. The electoral alliances are taking shape, as you know. We have to organize a meeting here in the village, plus others around Dodro Vello. María, when is your meeting with the Workers’ Society?”

         “Today at eight in the school at Tallós. I’m already late.”

         “Are you holding elections?”

         “They want me to continue as president.”

         “And the ones from the sawmill?”

         “Nobody has spoken differently. They’ve changed their minds now that Ismael da Pedra became an anarchist and vegetarian. We’re all working together.”

         Camoiras lights a cigarette and rests one foot on the front bumper of the Chevrolet. He adjusts the brim of his hat.

         “And Carou, is he in the Workers’ Society?”

         “He is. He’s acting as a day laborer. He says that in Dodro Vello’s Agrarian Society, and I don’t disagree. Very few have heard of Lenin. You know what he’s like.”

         “I want both of you there. You, María, because of the Workers’ Society. You, Amaro, because of the Galician Youth Group. Or aren’t the members of the Galician Nationalist Party coming?”

         “Two reactionary Catholics aren’t coming. Those of us in the Mocedades, the youth group, will be in the front line of the struggle against fascism and in support of a Galician Republic.”

         “We need that. We all have to take part. We have to get rid of this bunch of caciques, priests, and military now.”

         “Where are you going?” María asks.

         “We local ‘bats’ have a meeting in Padrón.”

         “Isn’t my father going with you?” asked Amaro.

         “No, he says he can’t, that he doesn’t feel well… But I think it’s because he’s going to leave the Republican Leftist Party.”

         “What?”

         “I don’t know. Let him tell you.”

         “Camoiras, can you wait for me and take me to Tallós? I just need to go home and drop off the basket and the cockles.”

         “And if you want we can set a time for me to bring you back. It’s not dark yet.”

         Camoiras picks up María’s basket, gets into his Chevrolet Confederate and backs up as far as Cancela da Maceira. He turns the car off.

         Raindrops are falling and greeting the Señorito’s palm trees, standing still, like black scarecrows. There are no good-byes. Amaro doesn’t even offer to carry María’s pail to her house, because she’s in such a hurry, and only manages to catch the scent of her cold sweat. He heads toward his doorway, downcast, and looks at the row of boxwood and the arched skeleton of the naked grape vine. He hears a creaking as Camoiras lowers the handle on the car window.

         “I’m counting on you, Amaro.”

         Amaro walks slowly toward the house. More raindrops fall, noisily. The fountain drips. From the door of the house he now hears Camoiras’ engine growl as he sees María coming, covered with a cloth sack. Crestfallen, he watches the car head out in the cold drizzle and the yellow lights disappearing around the bend at Emproas.

*     *     *

“Do you like empanada, Cheíño?”

         “I do, ma’am.”

         “But don’t you like Manoela, Rías’ daughter, better?”

         “I like empanada better.”

Sernanselle, December 23, 1935.

         Dear Son Ramón:

         I received your letter, I can’t recall when, and you were well, I ask about you and everybody tells me you’re well, and we’re well too at the moment.

         “I’m making one empanada of cornmeal with cockles and clams for Rosende and Miz Teresa and another one of flour with zorza, seasoned pork. Which one do you want?”

         I’m writing to you again right after the other one because recently we heard some people in Sernanselle say, and although you haven’t told us, that you wanted to get married and you wanted to kick Don Antonio’s two nephews out of the warehouse and it would make me so happy if you left all that and came here and that way we’d all be together, because eternity comes all too soon.

         All Sernanselle is in mourning. Reboiras died, Buxaniña died while sitting on her stool and just yesterday we buried María da Tecelana, God bless her after all the work it took her to die.

         The woman, sitting on a stool beside the artesa, the kneading trough, in a corner where Cheíño is writing, pours the seasoned pork from the pot that’s beside her through a narrow funnel into the thin membrane. She presses on the opening with both thumbs, chop, chop, chop. In another pot the twisted serpent of raw meat grows, its skin translucent and ugly. Glowing satin flames come from the oven.

         Still, there’s nothing to do except be patient. Still another tragedy has occurred in the village. Several men had been walking, hunting at night, in Cal de Barcas. One of them was Alexandre de Eiró, who was the unfortunate one. When he was in Cabos de Valoura in the field just past the irrigation ditch going toward the bend at Conxeiro, he must have lost hold of his rifle, because it went off and he shot himself. He collapsed right there, in the ditch.

         The woman gets up and prepares an empanada with a healthy amount of pork filling. She makes a fluted edging all around.

         Then the others, hearing the shot and the cries he managed to make, came running. Seeing what had happened, some of them stayed with him while others went running down the hill to the village to find some men to see if they could get there in time and he could explain what had happened. Since he couldn’t save himself, hopefully they could save themselves. At the same time they went for the doctor, but Don Antonio wasn’t home. They went for the priest to hear his confession, but he was at a funeral in Santa María de Dodro Vello, because Tenorio de Revixós was being buried. They rushed to Dodro Vello and since the priest of Buxán was there and saddled up, they brought him back to see if he could receive the confession.

         The woman finished the empanada of zorza and soon after the one with cockles, using the conch shell to scoop. The leftover cockles will be roasted in the bottom of the oven and set on an uncovered plate on top of the trough. She puts the small loaf in the oven to bake. The woman and the boy eat them. They’re as big as fists, those corazón cockles, salty hearts.

         So he came and heard the confession. He told how it had happened and immediately said he was leaving everything to his wife and children. After that he begged, screaming, to be able to die in his house, with his family at his side. The men picked him up and tried to see if they could get him home in time. They reached Souto, put him down there, and that’s where he died. Poor fellow didn’t live long enough to get home. Well, you have to be careful when carrying a weapon, because a tragedy can happen at any moment.

         The oven glowed hot and the bread was baked. The woman removes the fire from the belly with the peel, afterward uses the rodo, a baker’s hoe, then she cleans it with a laurel branch. She puts the empanadas to bake.

         You probably know too that there’s a poisonous star with a wild tail forming here and if by some chance it reaches the earth there’ll be a lot of danger. We always respect Our Lord’s wishes. They say it’s coming on May 18. Some people say they’ve already seen it. I didn’t see it.

         “Did you see it, Cheíño?”

         “When was it?”

         Up behind the pigsty there’s a barrel. The woman opens the plug on the cover and brings up a mug of pale, heavy wine. She drinks it and sets the bread to bake all spread out on the stone floor of the oven. She sits down again and continues stuffing it with the pork, chop, chop, chop.

         In the previous letter I told you that I’d let you know if the wine turned out good. Well, it did. There’s not a lot of it, but it’s good. Soon we’ll have to prune the grape vines, because some of them have only been tied up.

         We finished the seedbed today with your uncle Rosende, who’s a big help and keeps us going.

         Well, my son, I’d sure love it if you could come back here, at least we’d have a man in the house, that always means you get more respect. That other field that Conceición had let me use, the Trilla women came when I was picking corn ears, saying that before we could have it we had to pay up. They’re really mean. The worst is Celestina, who’s got a really sharp tongue.

         The woman finished filling a casing. She takes a ball of string and begins tying knots every few inches along the serpent.

         If you were here, my son, well, they’d be a little afraid of going after our fields and I’d be more at ease, you’d help me feel less anxious. Why don’t you come in February with da Couta?

         On the twentieth da Vieira and Neto de Sar left for where you are. I couldn’t send anything with them for you because they left so secretly. Not even a container of butter, or honey, not even the portrait of your mother and sister that we had taken in Padrón.

         It’s raining. We’re in winter now, but the sea at Corrubedo you can’t imagine how roiled up it is.

         I’ll have to stop now.

         “Don’t you want to add anything?”

         “What do you want me to say?”

         “Give our best to Manoel and Xesús, and your mother and sister also send a big hug.”

         The boy’s hand starts to tremble.

         Godfather, it’s me. I wrote this letter and this poor handwriting is mine, since María isn’t here right now. She went to a meeting of Dodro Vello’s Workers’ Society. It’s in my school. María is a Communist. You probably know the bird you brought me for the buckthorn wood cage you got me in Santiago has died. I’m raising turtledoves now.

         “Tell him not to forget you and to send you something.”

         Think about me because I think about you too, dear godfather, but don’t worry, I don’t need you to send me anything from where you are.

Text © Anxo Angueira Viturro

Translation © Kathleen March

This title is available to read in English – see the page “Novels”.