María de la O, last witness to the provincial past of her family line, put up no resistance when Laura led her to the station for the Interoceanic train. She went as gently as Leticia’s cadaver had gone to the Xalapa cemetery to be laid next to the body of her husband. What was she going to do except imitate her dead sister and pretend that she could go on animating her lineage in the only manner left to her: immobile and silent as a dead woman, but discreet and respectful as her unforgettable sister, she who as a girl on her birthday dressed in white and went out on the patio of the Catemaco house to sing:
on the twelfth of May
the Virgin dressed in white
came walking into sight
with her coat so gay...
Because at the moment of her death, María de la O’s memories of her sister Leticia and her niece Laura blended together.
3.
One day, a year earlier, Jorge Maura hastily returned from Washington, and Laura Díaz attributed his mood-the haste, the sadness-to the inevitable: On January 26, Franco’s forces took Barcelona and advanced toward Gerona; the civilian population began its diaspora through the Pyrenees.
“Barcelona,” said Laura. “That’s where Armonía Aznar came from.”
“The woman who lived in your house, whom you never saw?”
“Yes. My own brother Santiago was with the anarcho-syndicalists.”
“You’ve told me very little about him.”
“Two loves of that size won’t fit in my mouth at the same time.” She smiled. “He was a very brilliant boy, very handsome and brave. He was like the Scarlet Pimpernel”-now she laughed nervously-“posing like a glamorous fellow to cover up his political activity. He’s my saint, he gave his life for his ideas, he was shot when he was twenty.”
Jorge Maura kept a disturbing silence. For the first time, Laura saw him lower his head, and she realized he’d always held his Ibero Roman head high and proud, a touch arrogantly. She assumed it was because the two of them were entering the basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, where Maura insisted on taking her as an homage to Doña Leticia, whom he’d never met.
“Are you a Catholic?”
“Laura, I think that in Spain and Spanish America even atheists are Catholics. Besides, I don’t want to leave Mexico without understanding why the Virgin is the symbol of Mexico’s national unity. Did you know that the Spanish royal troops would shoot the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe during the war of independence?”
“You’re leaving Mexico?” asked Laura, keeping her tone neutral. “Then the Virgin isn’t protecting me.”
He shrugged his shoulders in a way that meant: I’m always leaving and returning, why are you so surprised? They were kneeling side by side in the first pew, facing the altar of the Virgin, whose image, Laura, explained to Jorge, framed and protected by glass, was imprinted on the mantle of a humble Indian, Juan Diego, a tameme or porter to whom the Mother of God appeared one day in December 1531, when the Spanish conquest was barely over, on Tepeyac Hill, a place where an Aztec goddess had been worshipped.
“How clever the Spaniards were in the sixteenth century,” said Maura, smiling. “No sooner had they carried off the military conquest than they set about the spiritual conquest. They destroy-well, we destroy-a culture and its religion, but we give the conquered people our own culture invested with Indian symbols or perhaps we give them back their own culture with European symbols.”
“That’s true. Here we call her the Dark Virgin. That’s the difference. She isn’t white. She’s the mother whom the Indian orphans needed.”
“She’s everything, can you imagine anything more ingenious? She’s a Christian and Indian Virgin, but she’s also the Virgin of Israel, the Jewish mother of the long-awaited Messiah. On top of that, she has an Arabic name, Guadalupe, river of wolves. How many cultures for the price of a single image!”
Their dialogue was interrupted by an underground hymn that was born behind them and advanced from the door of the basilica like an ancient echo that did not spring from the voices of the pilgrims but accompanied them or, perhaps, received them from earlier centuries. Jorge looked toward the choir, but there was no one, neither organist nor singing children, where they might have been. The procession was accompanied by its own cantata, low and monotonous, like all Indian music in Mexico. Even so, it could not drown out the noise of knees being painfully dragged along the stones. Everyone was moving forward on their knees, some with lighted candles in their hands, others with their arms crossed in front of them, others with their fists held tight to their faces. The women carried scapulars, the men nopal leaves over their bare, bloody chests. Some faces were veiled by gauze masks tied behind the head that transformed their features into mere outlines struggling to reveal themselves. The prayers spoken in low voices were like the trilling of birds, high and low chirping-totally unlike the even tone of the Castilian tongue, Maura realized, a language measured in neutral tones that made its angers, its orders, and its speeches all the stronger; here there wasn’t a single voice that one could conceive of as growing angry, giving orders, or speaking to the others except in a tone of advice, perhaps that of destiny, but they have faith, Maura raised his voice, yes, Laura moved forward, they have faith, what’s wrong, Jorge, why are you talking that way?, but she could not understand, you can’t understand, Laura, then explain it to me, tell me, Maura, answered Laura, ready not to give in to the tremor of doubt, to barely controlled rage, the ironic humor of Jorge Maura in the Basilica of Guadalupe, watching a procession of devout Indians enter, people whose faith had no questions, a pure faith sustained by an imagination open to every credulous belief: It’s true because it’s unbelievable, repeated Jorge, suddenly carried away from the place where he was and the person who he was and the person whom he was with, the Basilica of Guadalupe, Laura Díaz, she felt it with an irrepressible force, there was nothing she could do, all that was left to her was to listen, she wasn’t going to stop the torrent of passion that the entering procession of barefoot Mexican Indians unleashed in Maura, smashing his serene discourse, his rational reflection into a thousand pieces and throwing him into a whirlwind of memories, premonitions, defeats that spun around a single word, faith, faith, what is faith?, why do these Indians have faith?, why did my teacher Edmund Husserl have faith in philosophy?, why did my lover Raquel have faith in Christ?, why did Basilio, Vidal, and I have faith in Spain?, why did Pilar Méndez have faith in Franco?, why did her father the mayor have faith in Communism?, why did the Germans have faith in Nazism?, why do these destitute men and women dying of hunger, who have never received any compensation from the God they adore, have faith?, why do we believe and act in the name of our faith knowing full well we shall never be rewarded for the sacrifices faith imposes on us as a test?, toward what were these poor of the Lord advancing?, who, who, was the crucified figure Jorge Maura was now staring at, because the procession hadn’t come to see Christ but His Mother, believing completely that she conceived without sin, that the Holy Spirit impregnated her, that a randy carpenter was not the true father of Jesus?, did any one of the penitents approaching the altar of Guadalupe on their knees know that Mary’s conception was not immaculate?, why don’t we, I, Jorge Maura and you, Laura Díaz, believe in that?, what do we believe in, you and I?, can we together believe in God because He stripped himself of the sacred impunity of Jehovah by making himself a man in Christ?, can we believe in God because Christ made God so fragile that we human beings could recognize ourselves in Him?, Laura, but in order to be worthy of Christ do we have to abase ourselves even more, so we won’t be more than He?, is that our tragedy, is that our disgrace, that to have faith in Christ and be worthy of His redemption, we must be unworthy of Him, less than He is, sinners, murderers, lechers, full of pride, that the true test of faith is accepting that God asks us to do what He doesn’t allow?, is there a single Indian in this temple who thinks this?, no, Jorge, none, I can’t imagine it, do we have to be as good and simple and beyond temptation as these humble beings to be worthy of God, or do we have to be as rational and vain as you and I and Raquel Mendes-Alemán and Pilar Méndez and her father the mayor of Santa Fe de Palencia to be worthy of what we don’t believe?, the faith of the Mexican Indian or the faith of the German philosopher or the faith of the Jewish woman who converts to Christianity or the faith of the militant fascist or the militant Communist?, which could be, for God Himself, the best, the truest faith of all?, tell me, Laura, tell me about it, Jorge…