In the medieval streets at the heart of the place the buildings seem to lean towards one another, pressing inwards. Stella moves in front of him like a pale flag against the shadows, looking about herself. He wants to know exactly what it is that draws her attention there, at the apex of two buildings, or there, in that dark corner. But there is almost absolute silence around them, and to speak into it would be to break the spell. Perhaps the entire population of the town is on the beach, because it seems they are the only ones here.
Suddenly they are launched into sunlight: a bright square above the sweep of the sea revealed on one side. Now the heat of the day is upon them again: a vivid, pressing warmth. Before them is a majestic church decorated in marine colours – seafoam, coral, palest sand – looking almost as though it were once something dredged from the sea.
‘Do you want to go in?’ he asks Stella.
‘You go,’ she says. ‘I’ll sit there—’ gesturing to an ironwork table and chairs set up in one corner of the square.
He knows what she will do: sit, and gaze out at the sea. It holds a particular fascination for her, as though she never grows tired of looking at it. He thinks he understands. For one who grew up with it, as he did, it was – until recently – something like an old friend. For her, it is still a mesmerizing stranger.
‘All right.’
The colours used inside are the same, but in the shadows they gain depth, majesty. There are a couple of bowed white heads in the pews: indistinguishable from Hal’s position as men or women, their stillness absolute. They could have been sitting here for hours – days. He never inherited his mother’s religion – agnosticism is one of the only things on which he and his father agree. And yet he has always been fascinated by her faith, her absolute trust in a higher power. He has wished at times, since the war, that he shared it. That belief in a higher plan in particular, the conviction that everything that happens – even the terrible things – happens for some reason too complex and mysterious for understanding. And the act, too, of confessing – and through that confession, to have some hope of finding absolution. The funny thing is, he often finds himself in the role of confessor, like some sort of a secular priest. It has always been this way: at school, friends had confided in him their various misdeeds, their shameful secrets. And on Lionheart, too. But since he has had something of his own to confess he seems to have met only with resistance. Suze brushing his words away as though they might soil her. Or his own suppressions, his own shame.
He steps outside a few minutes later. Stella, he sees, has been joined by an elderly woman, and both sit deep in conversation. It takes him a moment to recognize the language they are speaking in as Spanish.
As he approaches they both glance up, and the old woman springs to her feet with surprising agility. She is quite incredibly small: not much taller standing than Stella sitting, and Hal wonders whether she has always been that height, or whether it is the press of age. They have been drinking coffee. The woman now is gesturing to the cups, hurrying inside a door behind them that he had not noticed before.
‘She’s going to bring you one,’ Stella tells him. ‘She has a café here.’
Hal looks at the solitary table, and thinks that it is possibly the smallest café in existence. ‘You were speaking Spanish?’
‘Oh,’ Stella says. ‘Yes. Her parents were Spanish – the family moved here before the turn of the century. We got talking about the town, and I asked her how long she had lived here.’ She takes a sip of her coffee, frowns. ‘I’m not sure how it happened. Suddenly, I was no longer speaking English … and it was so easy. I thought I had forgotten it. I hoped that I had.’
‘But it came back?’
‘Yes. Surprisingly well.’
‘She wanted to know why I knew it.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘That I’d spent some time in Mexico. I’m not sure she believes me … my pronunciation is too different. But I didn’t want to get into a long discussion—’ Stella breaks off, looking up as the woman appears with a cup for Hal, and a metal pot, from which she pours a thick dark stream of coffee. Then she disappears inside and returns with a plate of little cakes, which she places proudly between them.
‘Please,’ Hal says, gesturing to the remaining chair. ‘Sit with us.’
‘Ah, no, grazie, no.’ She looks between them and grins, broadly. Then she leaves them. They sip their coffee in silence for several minutes, and eat their cakes, which are delicious. Almost immediately tiny birds appear to search out the crumbs, scurrying about on feet as fragile as leaf skeletons.
For the first time since they started out for Cervo, Hal finds himself properly aware of their aloneness together.
‘When was the last time you spoke Spanish?’ he asks.
‘A long time ago – 1937.’
‘That was when you left Spain?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me about it.’
Her
New York, June 1937