As we left the hotel, the bells were still sounding, and he suggested that we go into a church nearby.
'That's all we've done,' I said. 'Churches, prayers, rituals.'
'We made love,' he said. 'We've gotten drunk three times. We've walked in the mountains. We've struck a good balance between rigor and compassion.'
I'd said something thoughtless. I had to get used to this new life.
'I'm sorry,' I said.
'Let's just go in for a few minutes. The bells are a sign.'
He was right, but I wouldn't know that until the next day.
Afterward, without really understanding the meaning of the sign we had witnessed in the church, we got the car and drove for four hours to get to the monastery at Piedra.
'The roof had fallen in, and the heads were missing from the few images that were still there—all except for one.
I looked around. In the past, this place must have sheltered strong-willed people, who'd seen to it that every stone was cleaned and that each pew was occupied by one of the powerful individuals of the time.
But all I saw now were ruins. When we had played here as children, we'd pretended these ruins were castles. In those castles I had looked for my enchanted prince.
For centuries, the monks of the monastery at Piedra had kept this small piece of paradise to themselves. Situated on a valley floor, it enjoyed a plentiful supply of what the neighboring villages had to beg forwater. Here the River Piedra broke up into dozens of waterfalls, streams, and lakes, creating luxuriant vegetation all around.
Yet one had only to walk a few hundred yards to leave the canyon and find aridity and desolation. The river itself once again became a narrow thread of wateras if it had exhausted all of its youth and energy in crossing the valley.
The monks knew all this, and they charged dearly for the water they supplied to their neighbors. An untold number of battles between the priests and the villagers marked the history of the monastery.
During one of the many wars that shook Spain, the monastery at Piedra had been turned into a barracks. Horses rode through the central nave of the church, and soldiers slept in its pews, telling ribald stories there and making love with women from the neighboring villages.
Revenge—although delayed—finally came. The monastery was sacked and destroyed.
The monks were never able to reconstruct their paradise. In one of the many legal battles that followed, someone said that the inhabitants of the nearby villages had carried out a sentence pronounced by God. Christ had said, 'Give drink to those who thirst,' and the priests had paid no heed. For this, God had expelled those who had regarded themselves as nature's masters.
And it was perhaps for this reason that although much of the monastery had been rebuilt and made into a hotel, the main church remained in ruins. The descendants of the local villagers had never forgotten the high price that their parents had paid for something that nature provides freely.
'Which statue is that? The only one with its head?' I asked him.
'Saint Teresa of Avila,' he answered. 'She is powerful. And even with the thirst for vengeance that the wars brought about, no one dared to touch her.'
He took my hand, and we left the church. We walked along the broad corridors of the monastery, climbed the wooden staircases, and marveled at the butterflies in the inner gardens. I recalled every detail of that monastery because I had been there as a girl, and the old memories seemed more vivid than what I was seeing now.
Memories. The months and years leading up to that week seemed to be part of some other incarnation of minean era to which I never wanted to return, because it hadn't been touched by the hand of love. I felt as if I had lived the same day over and over for years on end, waking up every morning in the same way, repeating the same words, and dreaming the same dreams.
I remembered my parents, my grandparents, and many of my old friends. I recalled how much time I had spent fighting for something I didn't even want.
Why had I done that? I could think of no explanation. Maybe because I had been too lazy to think of other avenues to follow. Maybe because I had been afraid of what others would think. Maybe because it was hard work to be different. Perhaps because a human being is condemned to repeat the steps taken by the previous generation until—and I was thinking of the padre—a certain number of people begin to behave in a different fashion.
Then the world changes, and we change with it.
But I didn't want to be that way anymore. Fate had returned to me what had been mine and now offered me the chance to change myself and the world.
I thought again of the mountain climbers we had met as we traveled. They were young and wore brightly colored clothing so as to be easily spotted should they become lost in the snow. They knew the right path to follow to the peaks.
The heights were already festooned with aluminum pins; all they had to do was attach their lines to them, and they could climb safely. They were there for a holiday adventure, and on Monday they would return to their jobs with the feeling that they had challenged nature—and won.
But this wasn't really true. The adventurous ones were those who had climbed there first, the ones who had found the routes to the top. Some, who had fallen to their death on the rocks, had never even made it halfway up. Others had lost fingers and toes to frostbite. Many were never seen again. But one day, some of them had made it to the summit.
And their eyes were the first to take in that view, and their hearts beat with joy. They had accepted the risks and could now honor—with their conquest—all of those who had died trying.
There were probably some people down below who thought, 'There's nothing up there. Just a view. What's so great about that?'
But the first climber knew what was great about it: the acceptance of the challenge of going forward. He knew that no single day is the same as any other and that each morning brings its own special miracle, its
The first one who climbed those mountains must have asked, looking down at the tiny houses with their smoking chimneys, 'All of their days must seem the same. What's so great about that?'
Now all the mountains had been conquered and astronauts had walked in space. There were no more islands on earth—no matter how small—left to be discovered. But there were still great adventures of the spirit, and one of them was being offered to me now.
It was a blessing. The padre didn't understand anything. These pains are not the kind that hurt.
Fortunate are those who take the first steps. Someday people will realize that men and women are capable of speaking the language of the angels—that all of us are possessed of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and that we can perform miracles, cure, prophesy, and understand.
We spent the afternoon walking along the canyon, reminiscing about our childhood. It was the first time he had done so; during our trip to Bilbao, he had seemed to have lost all interest in Soria.
Now, though, he asked me about each of our mutual friends, wanting to know whether they were happy and what they were doing with their lives.
Finally, we arrived at the largest waterfall of the Piedra, where a number of small, scattered streams come together and the water is thrown to the rocks below from a height of almost one hundred feet. We stood at the edge of the waterfall, listening to its deafening roar and gazing at the rainbow in its mist.
'The Horse's Tail,' I said, surprised that I still remembered this name from so long ago.
'I remember…' he began.
'Yes! I know what you're going to say!'
Of course I knew! The waterfall concealed a gigantic grotto. When we were children, returning from our first visit to the monastery at Piedra, we had talked about that place for days.
