By The River Piedra I Sat Down & Wept

He looked out at the fog. Now he no longer seemed interested in whether we negotiated the dangerous waters of a conversation about love. I was being tough, but there was no other way.

Subject closed, I thought. Our being together for these three days has been enough to change his mind. My pride was a bit wounded, but my heart was relieved. Do I really want this? I asked myself. I realized that I was already beginning to sense the storms brought on by the winds of love. I had already begun to feel the break in the dam.

We drank for some time without bringing up anything serious. We talked about the couple who owned the house and the saint for whom the town had been named. He told me some of the legends about the church across the square, which I could barely see in the fog.

'You're upset,' he said at one point.

Yes, my mind was wandering. I wished I were there with someone who could bring peace to my heart someone with whom I could spend a little time without being afraid that I would lose him the next day. With that reassurance, the time would pass more slowly. We could be silent for a while because we'd know we had the rest of our lives together for conversation. I wouldn't have to worry about serious matters, about difficult decisions and hard words.

We sat there in silence—and that in itself was a sign. For the first time, we had nothing to say, although I only noticed this when he stood up to go find us another bottle of wine.

Silence. Then I heard the sound of his footsteps returning to the well where we'd been sitting for more than an hour, drinking and staring at the fog.

This was the first time we'd been silent for so long. It was not the awkward silence of the trip from Madrid to Bilbao. And not the silence of my fearful heart when we were in the chapel near San Martin de Unx.

This was a silence that spoke for itself. A silence that said we no longer needed to explain things to each other.

The sound of his footsteps halted. He was looking at me—and what he saw must have been beautiful: a woman seated on the edge of a well, on a foggy night, in the light of the street lamp.

The ancient houses, the eleventh-century church, and the silence.

The second bottle of wine was half empty when I decided to speak.

'This morning, I convinced myself that I was an alcoholic. I've been drinking from morning to night. In these past three days, I've drunk more than in the entire past year.'

He reached out and stroked my hair without saying anything. I absorbed his touch without trying to pull away.

'Tell me about your life since I last saw you,' I asked.

'There are no great mysteries to tell. My path is always there, and I do everything I can to follow it in a dignified way.'

'What is your path?'

'The path of someone seeking love.'

He hesitated for a moment, fiddling with the near-empty bottle.

'And love's path is really complicated,' he concluded.

'Because on that path we can go either to heaven or to hell?' I wasn't sure whether he was referring to us or not.

He didn't respond. Perhaps he was still deep in the ocean of silence, but the wine had loosened my tongue again, and I had to speak.

'You said that something here in this city altered your course.'

'Yes, I think it did. I'm still not absolutely sure, and that's why I wanted to bring you here.'

'Is this some kind of test?'

'No. It's a surrender. So that She will help me to make the right decision.'

'Who will?'

'The Virgin.'

The Virgin! I should have known. I was surprised that all his years of travel, of learning, of new horizons hadn't freed him from the Catholicism of his childhood. In at least this respect, my friends and I had come a long way—we no longer lived under the weight of guilt and sin.

'I'm surprised that after all you've been through, you still keep the faith.'

'I haven't kept it. I lost it and recovered it.'

'But a faith in virgins? In impossible things and in fantasies? Haven't you had an active sex life?'

'Well, normal. I've been in love with many women.'

To my surprise, I felt a stab of jealousy. But my inner battle seemed already to have subsided, and I didn't want to start it up again.

'Why is she 'The Virgin? Why isn't She presented to us as a normal woman, like any other?'

He drained the few drops remaining in the bottle and asked if I wanted him to go for another. I said no.

'What I want is an answer from you. Every time we start to speak about certain things, you try to talk about something else.'

'She was normal. She had already had other children. The Bible tells us that Jesus had two brothers. Virginity, as it relates to Jesus, is based on a different thing: Mary initiated a new generation of grace. A new era began. She is the cosmic bride, Earth, which opens to the heavens and allows itself to be fertilized.

'Because of the courage She showed in accepting her destiny, She allowed God to come down to earthand She was transformed into the Great Mother.'

I didn't understand exactly what he was telling me, and he could see that.

'She is the feminine face of God. She has her own divinity.'

He spoke with great emotion; in fact, his words almost sounded forced, as if he felt he was committing a sin.

'A goddess?' I asked.

I waited for him to explain, but he couldn't say anything more. I thought about his Catholicism and about how what he had just said seemed blasphemous.

'Who is the Virgin? What is the Goddess?'

'It's not easy to explain,' he said, clearly growing more and more uncomfortable. 'I have some written material with me. If you want, you can read it.'

'I don't want to read right now; I want you to explain it to me,' I insisted.

He looked around for the wine bottle, but it was empty. Neither of us could remember why we had come to the well in the first place. Something important was in the air—as if what he was saying were part of a miracle.

'Go on,' I urged him.

'Her symbol is water—like the fog all around us. The Goddess uses water as the means to manifest Herself.'

The mist suddenly seemed to take on a life of its own, becoming sacred—even though I still didn't understand what he was trying to say.

'I don't want to talk to you about history. If you want to learn about the history, you can read the books I brought with me. But you should know that this woman—the Goddess, the Virgin Mary, the Shechinah, the Great Mother, Isis, Sofia, slave and mistress—is present in every religion on the face of the earth. She has been forgotten, prohibited, and disguised, but Her cult has continued from millennium to millennium and continues to survive today.

'One of the faces of God is the face of a woman.'

I studied his face. His eyes were gleaming, and he was staring into the fog that enveloped us. I could see that I no longer needed to prompt him.

'She is present in the first chapter of the Bible—when the spirit of God hovered over the waters, and He placed them below and above the stars. It was the mystic marriage of earth and heaven. She is present in the final