Friday, May 25, 2012
9:45 p.m.
White Nights

It feels so odd to be writing this with it still light outside, as if I were in a small village in Scandinavia. I went out for a bicycle ride earlier, to the other side of town, on the other side of this part of the estuary. The houses are larger, with more land between them, not built close together as they are in Mayo and Lestelle. Go over the bridge over the Rio Maior and take a side road on the left, and you reach the parish church, Santa Marina do Esteiro. I ride past the gate and look around. It is a small stone building with a statue of Christ extending his arms out wide atop its tiny steeple. Returning to the main road, I ride up towards the top of the hill and then turn around. The road on my left descends sharply towards the water, so I take it for a bit: it leads to the cannery by the water. Not too interesting, so I turn around and come back to the main road.

Earlier, Francisco took me to the cemetery in another part of the town, where Juanito, Socorro's husband, is buried. in an area uphill called Solleiros. Here many of the old stone houses have been power-washed, revealing a light-colored caramel stone and mortar. These old, once grimy-grey houses look as if they are new now. The stone is warm and tactile, their enduring beauty beckons to me.

We reach the cemetery The cemetery has been created in a clearing in the woods, which rise behind, giving the cemetery the appearance of being enfolded in them. It underwent major renovation two years ago. In the grounds, where there are flowers everywhere, a schoolmate of Francisco's, Oscar, is working on putting in new marble steps, a last bit of renovation. Oscar and Francisco exchange a few words, then we go to visit Juanito, who was known hereabouts by his nickname, Picheiro.

Instead of burying in the earth, which, subject to Galicia's natural wetness, will easily shift, above-ground burial is more common. Socorro has purchased an entire vertical line in a pantheon for herself and her husband and daughters, four good-sized niches made of pale grey granite striated with white. Juanito is buried in the second one.

Juanito was stocky, blond-haired and blue-eyed, with small features, lively and quick, possessed of a sharp sense of humor. Enterprising and determined, in the 1960s, when my sister and I were teenagers, he jumped ship in Baltimore, Maryland and had a taxi drive him to my parents' in New York City. He arrived in the middle of the night, which was very exciting for my sister and me, as my parents, my sister and I were invariably in bed by 11 p.m.. Juanito stayed with us for a month, until he found a place to live and a job. Socorro was my father's niece, and Juanito was a nephew by marriage, so that meant helping him out. Which posed no problems, as all Juanito wanted to do was find work, and an apartment and bring Socorro and his daughters over once he did. All of which came to pass. He became a skilled painter of Manhattan's gilded building facades, applying gold leaf to the Crown Building on Fifth Avenue, among others. Once, faced with a new and untrusting supervisor, who hovered while Juanito was applying the leaf, Juanito retorted,

"If I was going to steal, believe me, it wouldn't be this miserable amount, which is not worth my time. If I was going to steal, believe me, I would make it worth it. So leave me alone and find something else to do."


He could not have a finer resting place. Against the background of the pines and the sky, the simple stylized crosses at the top of the columns of pantheones parade, one after the other. It is all very peaceful, for those resting as well as those visiting.

***

And despite that inward quality to life here that finds its culmination in the niches of the cemetery, the daily reality is a bit too quiet for me. Of course, I could leave for Santiago earlier than Tuesday morning, finding a hotel there, but it would be unkind to Francisco, who wants to see my land rush through to the end.

If, then, I stay the weekend, it will be challenging passing the time: The only papers for sale at the estanco, (the combined smoke shop, candy store and newsstand) are regional ones. There is no movie theatre. There is no shopping. There are no gourmet foods to buy, there are no new dishes to try in local restaurants, there are no cooking classes. There is no adult education program. There are no team sports, although there are teenagers. There is no support group other than that of family, there is no organized activity other than that driven by work or family, with family being the more important of the two. All the families I have seen appear to be quite cohesive, though, younger family members easily accepting their obligation to care for the older, and the individual's personal wishes subordinate to the family's demands.


During the day everyone does what they normally do, which seems to be either going to work on the estuary (minding the shellfish beds,or catching fish); or working in a government office, or teaching, or working in the small local clinic, or watching children. Most people go home to eat lunch, as everything closes from one or two p.m. until four or five p.m. And "closed" means you rarely see anyone on the streets between those hours. Everything reopens at four or five o'clock, business continuing until eight or eight-thirty p.m., with not much perceptible difference in the street traffic. After everything closes, the streets are desolate again. Most people go home and watch television, eat and go to bed. Those with a bit more money go to the bar-cafes, have a beer or a soda or a coffee with a shot of something and read the newspaper, or watch a soccer match on television until it is time to go home. The one constant is the noise of cars on the one road, which never seems to let up.

Televisions are always on in the background, and not just in the bar-cafes: the television remained on throughout my long lunch with Sarita Tuesday, it was on when I visited Antonio Caamano Torres today, and when Francisco took me to his house, he turned on the television as soon as he got in. I imagine that this is not unusual, that most people in Esteiro, in Lestelle, in Freijo/Freixo, in Mayo, Paxareiras, Abelleira and all the nooks and crannies between Muros and Noya on the estuary, do the same . It is easy to understand why: no one openly lusts for the world outside, but television allows villagers to feel connected to it, to judge it, and thereby feel more satisfied with their own lives, which lack of most of the emblems of contemporary affluence. Yet they possess what seems an enviable certainty, one born of the demands of the the estuary and the fields.

The landscape wedges itself in my brain, dominating the reality, as it must that of those who grew up here and know nothing else. It is more important to know how to get a hot-water-heater to work (I have been without hot water since Wednesday, which is telling), than it is to talk about things in books, if you are going to live here. I brought four interesting books in French with me to pass the hours, but I cannot motivate myself to pick up one: who would I talk to about them?

It is raining very hard outside and windy. It looks as though predictions of rain all day tomorrow may be coming true. If tomorrow is rainy, bicycling any distance will be inadvisable, let alone aiming to make it to Finisterre and back, seventy-five kilometers each way. I could take the Castro Mil bus there, but Finisterre in a driving rain storm is a fool's errand.