Iberia (113 page)

 

‘What do you suppose is under us, as we sit here?’ the woman
asked when we had descended to the bar. ‘A tunnel, right through
the heart of this mountain. And what do you suppose the tunnel
was for?’ I said I had just driven through the tunnel, whereupon
she shouted, ‘Not that one. I mean the old one. The big one!’

 

She launched into a history of Castielfabib. The name, she
supposed, was a corruption of Castillo de Habib and referred to
an age when the Moors had occupied the fortress at the peak of
the mountain, more than a thousand years ago. The area had
been rich in silver and copper, and the tunnel had been scooped
out for a foundry in which coins and metal objects had been
minted for more than a millennium. In this tunnel the bells of
the church had been cast…

 

Her narrative was broken by the return of her husband,
bringing Señor Rodríguez’s photographs of the town, and with
much civic pride she pointed out the features, and as she spoke
I reflected on the peculiar fact that around the world generally,
Spain is known as a man’s country, but the women of Spain seem
not to have been informed of this fact. In England the proudest
sign that can appear on a shop is ‘Henry Thompson and Son,’
signifying that the male line of the Thompsons is strong and that
Henry’s son is prepared to carry on the traditions. The same is
true of France, where ‘et Fils’ is a blazon of commercial nobility.
In Spain, however, the proud sign is quite different: ‘Viuda de
Juan Gómez,’ or more often the abbreviation ‘Vda. de Juan
Gómez.’ This means that the widow of Gómez is carrying on the
business and assures her patrons that she will give the same
distinguished service she gave while her husband was still alive,
except that now she will be relieved of his bumbling interference.

 

‘But how do you get into your church?’ I asked again.

 

‘You’ll be surprised when you see.’ We left the plaza and
followed an extremely narrow footpath which appeared to end
at the edge of the cliff; however, at the last moment it swung to
the right, then ducked swiftly into a tunnel that ran completely
beneath the church. At a midway point, as one stood under the
huge structure, a door led upward from the tunnel, and it was by
means of a very steep flight of stairs that one entered the church.
It was indeed a church founded on a rock.

 

This unplanned excursion to Castielfabib, one of the more
rewarding interruptions of my tour, meant that it would be nearly
night when I reached Teruel, but this was not a loss, for as I
wandered down from the hilltop and picked up the Río Turia,
which would lead me in to Teruel, I came upon one of those
memorable evenings in Spain when low-hanging clouds provide
a darkened sky against which the sunset can reflect from below,
so that one seems to move in a sea of color. How beautiful the
little villages were as I drove through them. Take Villel, for
example, with its enormous tower rising against red hills, streets
lined with flower boxes, doorways glistening in blue-and-white
tiles, cypresses lining a cemetery. Not many villages in Spain are
prettier than those along the Turia. I also saw the imposing sign
welcoming travelers to the province of Teruel:

 

BIENVENIDO
WELCOME

 

BIENVENU
BENVENUTO

 

WILLKOMMEN

 

with the coat of arms that I remembered from my first visit, a
ferocious-looking bull over whose head hovered a star.

 

It was now past eight-thirty but the sun still lingered on the
horizon, throwing a blaze of light across the eastern sky; over the
earth itself a dull red glow lay like a fog, while at my feet ran the
dark Turia, the combination of colors forming a most dramatic
entrance to a city. My breath came more quickly when I realized
that at some unpredictable moment I would turn a bend in the
road and see once more that city which had been so often in my
mind and so deeply in my heart. I was actually nervous at the
prospect, but then the river turned abruptly and I saw before me,
on a hill in the distance, the outlines of Teruel, and I remember
thinking, Those buildings to the left and those big apartments to
the right. They weren’t here when I knew the place. And the more
I saw the more I realized that Teruel was not going to be the way
it had been thirty-four years ago; the changes were to be of a
magnitude that I would sometimes be unable to comprehend.

 

But then, as if to make my return to this mystical city simpler,
on my left I came upon a cluster of five once-handsome buildings,
now torn and roofless, their yellow bricks crumbling in the night
air. They looked as if they must have been there when I was first
in Teruel, but some tremendous force had ripped them apart, say
an artillery bombardment during the Civil War. What had they
been, these handsome structures? And why so many in one group?
A convent? A monastery caught in the cross fire of armies? I
stopped three passers-by, old men walking home from their work,
but they did not know.

 

In considerable excitement I entered the city, and my first
superficial impressions allayed my fears on the road, for Teruel
looked pretty much as I had remembered it. The railroad climbing
the mountains from Valencia still deposited passengers at the foot
of that splendid flight of stairs. The Moorish towers, the finest
still standing in Europe, were as handsome as ever in their coats
of tile. The public square was still small and poorly designed and
congested. And from his Roman tower the bull of Teruel still
looked down upon the community of which he was the symbol.
As I paid my acknowledgments to the bull, I thought of the strange
manner in which this city had been born, because Teruel is one
of the few settlements on earth whose moment of birth can be
specified.

 

Teruel is a young city, not much older than Madrid, and it is
small. Its birth had been auspicious but there things ended, for
it was now the least of Spain’s fifty provincial capitals, with less
than nineteen thousand population. In October, 1171, when El
Cid had been dead for three-quarters of a century, King Alfonso
II was endeavoring to establish a defensible frontier between
Christian Zaragoza and Moorish Valencia; one evening his troops
decided to give battle next morning at a favorable spot marked
by a hill; but the Moors offset his advantage by collecting that
night a herd of wild bulls and fastening to their horns bundles of
firewood which were set ablaze. The maddened bulls stampeded
toward the Christian lines, with the Moors following behind. In
previous battles this tactic had worked, for in the confusion caused
by the fiery animals the mounted Moors had overwhelmed the
Christians.

 

But this time Alfonso’s men stood fast, and with catapults which
lobbed boulders at the onrushing bulls, with long half-moon
lances that severed their hamstrings, with pikemen who formed
solid walls of spear points, the onslaught was repulsed. Infidel
power was broken in the area and it would now be possible to
establish a permanent border between the two forces. It was a
crucial victory.

 

While celebrating, the victorious Christians saw a sight which
became the symbol of their triumph: one bull, the only survivor
of the stampede, remained on the crest of the hill, shaking his
head at the heavens in such a way that the brand still burning
miraculously between his horns shone as if it was a star. ‘He has
been converted to our side!’ the Christians shouted, and the hill
which the bull had chosen for his last stand became the site of
Teruel.

 

The next thing I did proved symbolic. I got a haircut at the
barbershop of Maximiano Gómez, Calle del Mariano. 12, which
was an event of no importance except that as soon as Maximiano
heard that I was interested in Teruel, he stopped cutting my hair,
ran to a friend’s house and brought back a pamphlet on the city,
which he insisted that I take and for which he would accept no
money. ‘I want you to have the best visit possible in my city,’ he
said. ‘It’s small and during the war it was much abused. But now
it’s fine again.’ This meeting with Maximiano set the standard
for all that was to happen to me in my chosen city.

 

On my earlier visit I had stayed at a small hotel; this time a new
parador was available, and in its dining room I was introduced
to a speciality which I commend. The menu said simply
‘Entremeses variados,’ which from my attendance at theater I
could translate only as ‘Theatrical entr’actes varied.’

 

‘What might they be?’ I asked the waitress, and she smiled
condescendingly as if I were a relative come in from the country.

 

‘You don’t know what entremeses are?’ she said loudly enough
for all in the room to hear, and without waiting to determine
whether or not I wanted them she hurried into the kitchen and
appeared sometime later with an enormous tray, from which she
placed on my table, for me alone, twenty-one small saucers, each
with a respectable portion of hot or cold food. It was a feast both
to the palate and the eye. There were four kinds of fish, three
meats including little balls of mutton highly spiced, eggs in aspic,
four or five vegetables including the finest fried eggplant, olives,
pickles, pimientos, potato salad, potato chips and hot toasted
almonds. And it must be remembered that entremeses were merely
the first dish of a four-course meal.

 

Next day my bland good luck continued, for I met Señor Don
Francisco Cortel Zuriaga, a native of Teruel and for the past
fourteen years its director of publicity. He was a lively man of
middle years and height, with a dark mustache and grayish brown
hair; his stocky, rugged appearance made me think his ancestors
must have come from the mountains of Spain. He could not be
considered a literary man, but he possessed an unusual sense of
what a writer might like to see, and he would not rest until it had
been seen.

 

‘You know the Lovers of Teruel, of course?’

 

‘No, I haven’t heard about them.’

 

His jaw dropped. ‘You were in Teruel thirty years ago and you
didn’t meet the Lovers?’

 

‘That’s right.’

 

This information was so disgusting to Don Francisco, so
incredible, to judge from his reaction, that he sent out for a
guidebook and sat twirling his thumbs while I read the section
on the Lovers. As soon as I had done so, he whisked me out of
his office and across the square to a narrow alleyway that led up
a small hill. ‘No man can know anything about Teruel unless he
understands the Lovers.’ He took me to a tiny chapel attached to
a church and there, as we stood surrounded by the tapestries that
enclosed the place, he showed me a pair of marble tombs, one
topped by the jacent statue of a handsome young man, the other
by a girl of most exquisite beauty.

 

As I contemplated the tombs, Don Francisco was on his knees
with his eyes at floor level. ‘See for yourself. Not legends, these
two. Real people.’

 

He invited me to kneel with him, and when I had done so I
found that the lower portions of the tombs consisted of slabs of
marble carved in an ornate geometrical design; it had many holes
through which I could see into the caskets, lit by electricity and
containing the mummies of the Lovers, dead for more than seven
centuries.

 

As I knelt there, a bus drew up and thirty or forty tourists from
a distant part of Spain filed into the little chapel to pay homage
to the only two people who have ever brought fame to Teruel,
and I should like to report the history pretty much as the singsong
guide recited it to the visiting group.

 

‘The year was 1217, Don Domingo Celada being judge of
Teruel. In his city were two noble and influential families, Segura
and Marcilla. Daughter of the first was the beautiful Isabel, whom
you see here. Son of the second was the brave Diego over there.
From the days when they played together as children they loved
each other, but Diego’s family had fallen on hard times and was
poor, wherefore Isabel’s father, the richest man in town, forbade
their union.

 

‘However, Diego sought and obtained an agreement whereby
he would leave Teruel and for five years try to build his fortune
in the world, at the end of which time, if he had succeeded, he
would return and wed Isabel. With the fire of youth he left the
city, and since no one heard from him for the next five years, at
the expiration of the term the head of the Segura family forced
his daughter to marry the very rich Don Pedro de Azagra of nearby
Albarracín, the hill town which we visited this morning.

 

‘The wedding was convened. The couple were married, but as
the bells ceased ringing, there was a clatter at the Zaragoza gate
and watchmen ran to advise the townspeople that Diego Marcilla
had returned from his five years’ exile with great riches, ready to
marry his beloved. Diego had not counted in his five years’ grace
that first day on which he had fled Teruel. Isabel’s family had.

 

‘The young man ran to Isabel and pleaded with her to marry
him, but she pointed out that this was impossible as she already
had a husband. Diego then begged her to give him one kiss which
he could bear with him as he wandered through the world. This,
too, Isabel refused, whereupon, as a book in our archives reports,
“Diego was not able to bear the anguish and tension of his
enforced departure, and with a sigh died from pain at the feet of
her.”

 

‘Next day, at this church of San Pedro his funeral services were
held, to which Isabel came, dressed in her wedding gown. Silently
she walked down the nave and advanced to the bier, where she
knelt in order to give Diego the kiss which in life she had denied
him, but as she did so, she died, falling prostrate upon the corpse
of her beloved.’

 

The two deaths from love, something never before heard of,
so impressed Teruel that the citizens demanded that Isabel and
Diego be buried side by side in the church, and it is surprising to
find that the religious authorities acceded to this improper
demand. Throughout Spain and the medieval world sped the
fame of the Lovers of Teruel, and during repairs made to the
church in 1560, the graves of the couple were uncovered and their
mummies translated to the spot where they now rest.