Monday, May 28, 2012
Leaving Esteiro


I hear the alarm at 7:30 a.m. Francisco is picking me up at 8:30 a,m., so we can return the bicycle, see Lolis, and visit the Land Registry Office in time for me to make a bus to Santiago sometime today. Although it was Sunday night, and Monday is a work day, last night the carousing went on until late. Through the apartment's thin walls I could hear an older man with a voice that sounded roughened with alcohol and cigarettes upbraiding a young boy. I did not want to know why.

I took one last look at the apartment and brought all my bags downstairs. I had a bag full of foodstuffs for Francisco, from leftover leg of lamb and ensalada rusa Sarita pushed on me, to half an empanada gallega. I had the bicycle and my large knapsack and a bag with reading matter and the small knapsack with passport, cash, credit cards and property documents. Plus trash to put into the recyling bin down the street.

Leaving the rest behind, I walked out the door with the newspapers and some banana peels and turned onto the street. There, in front of the beauty salon, was Francisco, ten minutes early. We were ready in minutes, the bicycle fitting easily into the hatchback of the car, along with my large knapsack. The plan was to leave the bicycle and helmet tied up against the railing in front of Triki Bicycles in Serres, a neighborhood at the outskirts of Muros: Vicente, who rented it to me, would recognize his bicycle and the combination. We were in Serres in a few minutes, the bicycle locked up and on our way to Muros in time to see Lolis first thing at 9:00 a.m..

After barging in on Lolis early (she would normally see no one until 10:00 a.m.), and asking more questions about where to find out about a carnet de identidad, she sent us back to the City Hall. Someone in the administration told us that the carnet de identidad existed when my father left in 1945; and, that to find it, I would have to ask in the offices of the National Police, who would have access to the data base. The offices are in Santiago: fortunately, I was going there. Sometime before I left Santiago for Dublin I could stop by the National Police offices and request a copy of the documentation on file next to my father's name.


We followed through on Francisco's last idea, that we check the private land registry. An office on the outskirts of town, we found it by asking a passersby, who directed us to an unobtrusive building. We walked up the stairs into a plain white office with two desks. A young man, very tall, very thin, with longish hair --he looked more like he ought to be in a rock band than behind a desk-- took down all the information and started looking. He found nothing.

"There is no obligation to register here. It is a private service, so not everyone wants to pay the fee." The fee is between 65 Euros to 100 Euros a parcel, which would explain why.

Our last straw having been exhausted, Fernando and I started to make our way towards the Castro Mil stop --it was about quarter of eleven, and there was a bus to Santiago at eleven. I told him it was my sister's and my intention to make the parcels over to him, and that she and I would never build a house there or buy an apartment there, and who knows when we would be there again. It was our wish that he have the property --although he should tell no one of our intention, to avoid controversy. In our view, this was a result that would have pleased our father, that the land stay with someone who would appreciate it.

"Well, that's a lot --your sister might want to give it to her children--"

"They are not going to come here to build, Francisco,"

"Well, this property that belongs to you and your sister --having it is not on my mind. I just want to see that you take care of what your father left you and your sister. I will do my best to find whatever your father and Carabinas wrote about the properties they exchanged. If I find something, I will take it to Sarita and she can e-mail you."

The Castro Mil drew up and started accepting passengers. I gave Francisco a big hug and that is how I left Esteiro. Francisco smiled broadly, and I got the feeling that he enjoyed tracking down the parcels and following leads to establish my father's ownership to the Savilas parcel. I am struck by how keen Francisco's brain is: he did not know anything about the Savilas parcel --it was Sarita who brought it up-- but he came up with the idea of visiting Jose de Pachon, with the idea of contacting Monica, the daughter of the man with whom my father exchanged parcels; and with the idea of visiting the land registry office today.

Yet Francisco never held a job for very long: he worked on ships, the natural route for someone from a small village on the Costa da Morte; he came to the United States and worked as a painter. None of the jobs panned out. So that now, in his fifties, he has not contributed in any significant degree, to his retirement. On account of his partial deafness and his vision, he collects a modest disability pension.

As a young boy, his mother found him the most difficult of her children to cope with. Not being a particularly sensitive woman to begin with, inured by hardship to all but the most drastic of signs of distress in her children, Francisco was rebuked often. When she became too infirm to care for herself, her arms and legs swelling, making walking difficult, she became more dependent on Francisco to drive her where she needed to go. Francisco's job became taking his mother where she needed, and responding to her demands. In thanks, she left him half her house, and the majority of the land parcels, thereby earning Francisco the enmity of his two sisters. His twin brother, back in New York, contacts him weekly to see how he is making out.

He is a peaceful man, whose natural thoughtfulness was never nurtured. In childhood, he said, after his father died, they had just enough to eat, but no money. Existence was bleak. His mother must have been a tyrant --Rosa did not remind me of Katrina Paxinou playing Maria in Whom The Bell Tolls for nothing-- and now, he has a measure of his own life. It may not be large enough for most of us, but is suits Francisco. I was lucky to have him play Virgil to my Dante during my week in Esteiro.

***

I knew I would be sick on the Castro Mil. Once again, the winding roads, one after the other, negotiated easily by the driver and the other passengers, made me green. Seventy six kilometers over two hours might have been seventy six hours. Fortunately, I did not have much in my stomach, so I made it to Santiago without incident. I hoisted my large knapsack on again and walked into Santiago just as I had when I arrived from Irun and when I arrived from the Camino. I was a pilgrim again.

I arrived at the Hotel Altair and was rapturous to be shown to a well-furnished hotel room with a modern bath with lots of hot water. I put my things down and went first to the post office, to mail my French books home. From there, I went around the corner to the National Police station. In civil law countries, every citizen and legal resident has an identity card, and it is associated with a fixed address. If the cardholder moves, it is incumbent upon him to register his new address with the police station in the precinct of residence, so that it can be part of the national data base.

The station is a very large modern square of the same ivory color that I admired so in the rustic buildings in Muros. There were three policemen there to ask me what I wanted, and explaining, told me I had to come back between 9:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. to ask about the carnet de identidad. Francisco had explained that having to go to Santiago from a rural village in relation to some change in the "carnet" is normal --and inconvenient. Perhaps the coincidence that I am again in Santiago will augur well for production of my father's "carnet" data tomorrow.

After this I went to see Amparo Rodriguez Meyer, from whom I had bought jet the week before: I wanted to see whether her employee had returned, so that I would see the little museum of jet she had told me about. The employee had quit, but Amparo would take me there herself, if I would come by at about 7 p.m., which I would.

With an hour to wait, I took myself to the Cathedral and hugged Santiago again, prayed at the crypt where his remains lie, and seeing the priest who had heard my confession last time, went over to talk to him. I confessed myself to be conceited and impatient, and noted that I resembled Martha, who was too busy attending to little details to hear Christ's lesson, to which her sister Mary listened closely.

"'Marta, Marta', he rebuked her. 'Your sister has had the better part'" the priest said, quoting the New Testament passage. "Well, try to devote a little time to contemplation. It is a mercy God gives us. For your penance say two 'Our father's. 'And now through the power of the Holy Spirit I absolve you of your sins and grant you peace and pardon, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.'"

***

The Museo de Azabache is more of a showcase for the sale of the jet jewelry in the window than a museum as a curator might define one. However, it does have some unique and very old pieces on view, as well as an instructional film that explains its history and why Santiago was known as a center of jet carving. The reasons being two: that the finest source of jet in the world is in the province next door, Asturias; and, that the guild of jet carvers was able, from the middle ages until the wars of the 17th and 18th centuries, to profit from the steady influx of pilgrims to Santiago, who wanted a souvenir of the cathedral city. In Rome, the Castellani and other jewelers made copies of Etruscan jewelry for pilgrims there to remember their trips by, in Santiago it was jet objects: rosaries, scallop shells, crucifixes, statues of Santiago, that the hundred or so sellers of jet objects on the street known as the acebecheria/azabacheria depended on for their livelihoods.

With the Hundred Years War and other conflicts discouraging pilgrims from going to Santiago, the guild went into decline, with fewer carvers and fewer traders. In the mid-19th century, Rodriguez Meyer founded a school of carving which incorporated other precious materials --coral, amethysts, amber-- into jet pieces. The difficulty of jet carving is not that it is difficult to carve, but that not being a true mineral (it is fossilized wood), its internal structure is more fragile. Carving in jet predates Christianity: Among the pieces on display in the collection are figas --images of a fist with the thumb pushing through the index and middle finger, a protection against evil. At one time, this talisman was proscribed by the Roman Catholic Church as a pagan holdover. However, Gallego carvers engaged in a bit of syncretism, knowing the thumb showing through the fist was still believed to be potent: the carvers would carve a small figure of Santiago in the form of a pendant, making the platform at the bottom incorporate a figa. The figa is very popular in the Caribbean, where babies are often given a gold chain with a tiny figa to wear around their throats to protect them.