Far away, where I imagined the end of the aisle to be, a large candle was burning. It was the only point of light in the whole building. I took a few steps in that direction, only to stop again. I didn’t know which way to go and my friends seemed to have disappeared.
My eyes remained fixed on the flame at the other end of the aisle but gradually I began to make out a few other things. I noticed the stained-glass windows, which were blue, and the golden reflections on a column near the candle. But still I didn’t dare to move. Then I heard a voice behind me say: “Don’t be frightened, Esteban. It’s only me,” and, despite the warning, I jumped.
Before I had time to recover, a long, bony arm had encircled my neck. It was the canon. Bringing his face closer to mine, he said:
“Come now, Esteban. Don’t be frightened.”
His clothes smelled very strange to me.
“The flame of that candle never goes out, Esteban,” he whispered, pointing ahead with his free hand. “When we have to light a new candle, we always light it from the dying flame of the old one. Just think what that means, Esteban. What do you think it means?”
I was so scared I was incapable of thought and I felt ashamed every time the canon said my name. I kept silent.
“It means,” he began, “that the light we see today is the same light seen by our grandparents and our great-grandparents; it’s the same light our ancestors gazed upon. For hundreds of years, this house has united us all, those alive now and those who lived before us. That’s what the church is, Esteban, a community that transcends time.”
This argument clearly took no account of the circumstances of my own life. The Church not only united, it also divided; the fact of my being there was but one example of that. I said nothing, however, to contradict the canon. In fact, I felt humbled, as if my exclusion from that community were a personal defect or stain. I broke out in a cold sweat.
Smiling, the canon remarked that since there were still some minutes before the service was due to begin, I should take the opportunity to have a look at the altar and to visit other parts of the building. And, leaving me alone, he moved off toward a side door that led to the choir loft. I heard the rustle of his clothes even after he was out of sight.
We tend to think that things are in themselves either big or small, failing to realize that what we call size is in fact always relative. They are only big or small in relation to other things and that is why I can still say now, in all honesty, that I have never again seen anyplace as big as the church at Obaba. It was a hundred times the size of the school, a thousand times bigger than my bedroom. What’s more, the shadows blurred the edges of walls and columns and made the bosses and the ribs of the vault seem even more remote. Everything seemed larger than it really was.
One of the picture books I used to read at the time recounted the adventures of an expedition that had become trapped inside a hollow mountain and I associated the pictures in that book with the place I saw before me. Not only because of the obvious physical resemblance but also because of the asphyxia that was beginning to afflict me as it had the characters in the story. I continued on up the aisle but with the growing conviction that I would surely suffocate before I reached the flame burning on the altar. Then I noticed an old lady dressed in black approach the foot of the altar and lift a lever. Immediately the whole church was filled with light.
That change from darkness to light made me feel better and I began to breathe more easily. With some relief I thought: It isn’t a hollow mountain, it’s more like a theater, like the ones my father used to go to in Hamburg, like the places where they put on operas.
Most of my father’s memories revolved around the theater and I knew by heart the plots and choreography of everything he had seen at the opera house on Buschstrasse or at the Schauspielhaus, as well as many stories about the actors and actresses of the time. Comparisons between what I’d imagined in those conversations with my father and what I saw then seemed unavoidable. Yes, the church was a theater with a large central stage, images of bearded men, and seats and benches for the audience. And everything was golden, everything shone.
A deep, almost tremulous sound ran through the whole church and when I turned my head toward the choir loft, I noticed some twenty women kneeling at their pews. They were moving their lips and staring at me.
Oppressed by so many eyes, I ran toward the door the canon had entered and a moment later I was taking the stairs two by two up to where my companions would be waiting.
Esteban Werfell laid his pen down wearily on the table and raised his eyes to the window, though without seeing anything in particular, without even noticing the din the swans by the lake were making. One of his “batty ideas” had just flitted across his mind, interrupting him, obliging him to consider the meaning of that twelfth notebook. What point was there in remembering? Wouldn’t it be better to leave the past well alone, rather than stir it all up?
“Only the young really enjoy looking back,” he thought. But when they talked about the past, they were really talking about the future, about the fears and desires they had about that future, about what they wanted from life. Moreover, they never did so alone, as he did. He didn’t really understand his urge to remember. Perhaps it was a bad sign, a sign that everything was over once and for all, that he was tired of life.
He shook his head to drive away such thoughts and finally noticed what was going on outside. By the side of the swans’ house someone had stopped to shelter from the rain and to throw pieces of bread into the lake. The swans were swimming back and forth, honking like mad things. “Their first visitor of the day,” he thought, “they must be hungry.” Then to himself he said: “Back to the choir loft.”
The moment I entered the choir loft, the canon got up from his seat at the organ and stretched out his arms. Almost sweetly, he said:
“Young Werfell is finally among us. Let us all rejoice and give thanks.”
Putting his hands together he began to pray out loud and all my companions followed suit.
“Welcome, Esteban,” he said afterward, assuring me that: “From now on you will belong to our community, you will be one of the chosen.” My companions stared at me as if they were seeing me for the first time. Andrés was in charge of distributing the books of psalms. The copy he handed me was almost brand new.
“Don’t worry, Esteban. A few more Sundays and you’ll be as good as us. You’ll probably end up being the best of all,” he whispered.
The pages of the book were very thin and had gilded edges. A red ribbon marked the psalms for that day.
When the canon asked me to sit at his side, the gaze of my companions became even more fixed. I hung back. I realized that it was an honor to be asked, but feared the physical proximity of the canon. The disagreeable smell emanating from his clothes was still fresh in my memory.
“Don’t be frightened, Esteban. Come and sit up here with me,” said the canon, as he began to play. The floorboards of the choir loft vibrated.
I was puzzled to see that the organ had two keyboards and that in order to play it, one had to move one’s feet. Sometimes the melody grew unpredictable with abrupt highs and lows and the canon seemed to be dancing sitting down, rocking back and forth on the bench and bumping up against me. I found it difficult to follow the melody of the psalms we sang; I couldn’t concentrate.
By the third psalm, I had closed the book and simply sat looking at the scene before me. There were my companions opening and closing their mouths and down below were the kneeling women; a little farther off, the candle flame burned, giving off orange lights.