The Heart Has Its Reasons (48 page)

Luis, from the other side of the desk, did not reply.

“Can we count on you, then? Here is the conclusive evidence and a written report,” I said, showing him the folder in which we'd placed our findings. “We can take a look at it right now.”

The department chairman finally spoke, his words loaded with ambiguity.

“Sometimes we are blinded by arrogance and are not conscious of how elementary things are. Until someone sets before our eyes the simple naked truth.”

I had difficulty figuring out if that was an acknowledgment of Daniel's apology or a reciprocal apology for his own behavior. But there was no time for guessing games. Time ticked away; we could not wait.

“Then, are you willing?” I insisted.

Just as she'd done a few days earlier when she came in loaded with pizzas, Fanny again cut me off in midsentence. This time without even knocking, she poked her impetuous head through the doorway and, like an ax blow, interrupted me.

“Professor Super is looking for you. He says it's urgent.”

Daniel automatically felt the pockets of his jacket and trousers. Afterwards he uttered “shit”—his spontaneous reaction on realizing that he'd left his cell phone someplace on that frantic morning after a practically sleepless night.

Next, Fanny opened the door to let the veteran professor through.

On that day Joe Super's eyes didn't show the usual bonhomie and sense of humor with which he always participated in my classes. There was no trace of the charm with which he came up to our table to greet us on the night we ran into him at Los Olivos. On that morning his eyes conveyed only worry.

“The police have come to Los Pinitos. They intend to evict the campers. Before the discovery of the graves, the judge ordered an evacuation, but the kids are unwilling to budge and things are getting tenser by the minute. If you're going to tell them anything, it's best you do so as soon as possible.”

We immediately stood up and turned to Luis Zarate doubtfully, silently, waiting for his reaction. If he agreed to come with us it would be an act of blind faith, since we still hadn't been able to fill him in
regarding our conclusions. Perhaps that was why he took a moment to react. Until finally, in silent affirmation, he too rose.

While Daniel drove, jolting us on the curves and running a few red lights, we explained rather hastily the particulars of our findings. Both Luis and Joe knew from the previous evening that we had conclusive evidence, but neither knew the details. The long early-morning work had allowed us to incorporate structure and coherence into our research, so we finally had a consistent account of the facts.

We reached at Los Pinitos almost at the same time that two more police cars arrived ready to join several others with their sirens and lights on. Nearby were a couple of imposing excavators standing idle as well as a large number of private cars. An enormous billboard full of advertising faces, empty smiles, and phrases whose message was beginning to wear thin had been set up there, promising exciting shopping and unlimited entertainment.

We had to walk a considerable distance until we reached the campers. There were more than a dozen multicolored tents, innumerable signs, and fifty or sixty students in sight, along with some onlookers and a professor or two. They all wore over their clothes the orange protest T-shirts that had begun to appear on campus since the demonstration.

Around them were crowds of people: less confrontational members of the platform, sympathizers and onlookers of all colors and shapes, many taking pictures. Some local television crews were among them, and at a camping table, behind a couple of large thermoses, the warrior grandmothers distributed plastic cups brimming with coffee. Others chatted away or simply watched the scene expectantly, not knowing what was going to happen.

The police had cordoned off the perimeter of what we already knew had been the mission's tiny cemetery. It was only a small rectangular area amid the pine trees, sixteen feet long, not more than six feet wide. The first thing that Daniel and I did, instinctively, was to head in that direction.

“Hey, you can't go through!” a policeman yelled from a distance. Daniel had just stooped to cross under the tape that restricted access.
In black letters on a yellow background could clearly be read
DO NOT CROSS
.

As if he were deaf and could not read, he offered me his hand. “Come on!” he ordered.

“You were here, Father Altimira,” he said in a low voice when we came to the first grave, covered by a dirty gray stone barely one foot square, rough and irregular.

At our back we could hear Joe Super negotiating with the policeman who wanted to force us out of there.

We crouched to read the poorly marked initials, E. F., most likely scratched with no tool other than a rudimentary awl. On top of them, a humble cross, and beneath it, the year 1827. The year between the burning of San Francisco de Solano Mission in Sonoma and the return to Spain of that rebel father whose virtues did not include submission.

“What a pity Fontana never came upon them,” I sighed.

“It would have been difficult: time had covered them well. Look,” Daniel said, grabbing a handful of soil that had been removed when the graves were unearthed.

“What he might have found around here, though, is this,” I added, taking out of my raincoat pocket the rough wooden cross we had found among the jumble of papers in one of Darla Stern's boxes.

Daniel took it out of my hands.

“It has been a good traveling companion,” he admitted while contemplating it. He then looked me in the eye and caressed my cheek with two fingers. “And so have you.”

“Get out of there once and for all, please!” the policeman roared.

We had no choice but to obey.

A few other members of the protest had joined Joe Super and Luis Zarate. They were all privy to the news of our findings when Joe, after Daniel's call, had shared it with them the previous evening.

“The moment to make it public has come,” Daniel said.

He looked at me, raising an eyebrow. I understood him and immediately answered.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

The categorical no came from me. The first yes came out of Daniel's mouth; the second, from Luis's. Both serious, convinced. I swallowed my feelings.

“On the condition that I speak in Spanish,” I acquiesced after a few disconcerting seconds. “If I were to do it in English, I don't think I'd be able to convey the spirit of this story. I need a translator.”

They both looked at each other.

“Go ahead, Mr. Chairman,” Daniel then said. “If from now on you're going to be Fontana's spokesperson, this is a good time to get started.”

The news that someone was going to make a statement quickly spread, and everyone began to crowd around us. The young Rastafarian I'd seen so many times took his drum out of a tent and struck up a good rhythm, inviting those present to be quiet.

When silence was established I began, with the voice of reason and the voice of the heart. For myself, and for those who had accompanied me on this adventure, and especially for those who'd been left behind.

“Over a period of more than five decades, a few Franciscans, austere Spanish monks, moved by an unwavering faith and a blind loyalty toward their king, traveled across the still-wild terrain of California, erecting missions in the name of their king and their God. They began in 1769 with the mission of San Diego de Alcala and, advancing by foot and on the back of mules, made their way northward through unknown territory, gradually erecting the twenty-one missions that ended up forming what would be known as the Camino Real. Their aim was to convert the native population and introduce their own civilization, and although such intentions in present-day eyes are questionable, due to the painfully high price that the native population paid in the form of sickness, submission, and loss of identity, we cannot ignore the meritorious labors performed by those men, who once upon a time crossed an ocean to carry out what they understood to be their sacred duty. They brought with them their language and customs, their fruits and animals and their way of working. And they left their indelible imprint in hundreds of names that dot the map and in a thousand little
details that leap to the eye, from the color of the walls to roof tiles and vineyards and window grilles.”

I made several pauses to let Luis, to my right, translate. Daniel, standing next to Joe, had moved to one side, giving the two of us the entire spotlight. Around us, more than a hundred pairs of eyes and ears looked on and listened with interest.

“More than a century and a half after that first mission was built, life's vicissitudes brought a Spanish professor, Andres Fontana, to these shores. He was moved in his later years by his discovery of the numerous echoes of his native country in this foreign land. Long since exiled by then, he decided to throw all his energies into researching what his compatriots had done here. And after a few years' work poring over old documents, he had come to believe that the fabled chain of missions founded by the Spanish Franciscans did not end with the construction in 1823 of San Francisco Solano Mission in Sonoma, as had always been thought. Somehow he knew that they'd gone farther, and he dedicated the rest of his life to finding proof that would confirm this. Unfortunately, he died before he was able to finish his work. But thanks to his effort and perseverance, we've reached the conclusion that the mission he sought really did exist. The graves that were discovered yesterday confirm that there was in fact a mission here.”

After Luis had again translated, I mentioned Altimira and gave a bit of his background, including his disregard for authority in building the Sonoma mission. Then I spoke of the fire that razed it.

“Defying his superiors once more, moved perhaps by a mixture of frustration and rebelliousness or the iron will of his faith, Father Altimira, one of the last friars to arrive in California from old Spain, came by foot all the way to this inhospitable place and, without any means or permission of any kind, founded an extremely modest mission. He was accompanied by a few converted Indians, who along with him had survived the Sonoma fire and who now lie resting beneath these gravestones after perishing in an Indian attack. As you can see, nothing is left of that spare construction that Altimira erected except the remains of what was their cemetery. The survival of the mission was brief, limited at most to a handful of months. And although we don't
have any record of it, inspired as we are by Andres Fontana's passionate quest, we want to believe that Father Altimira, in an evocation of his own helplessness, consecrated it to Our Lady of Oblivion, calling it Mision de Nuestra Señora del Olvido.

“My old compatriot would have been proud of all of you: for your dedication in fighting to preserve these surroundings, and for your determination to retain the integrity of this place, which belongs to everyone and which meant so much to him. Having lived intensively with his memory for these past few months, I feel honored, in his name, to express gratitude for what you've accomplished.”

Luis translated in chunks, and at the end applause rang out, screams of joy were heard, and the young man in dreadlocks beat his drum yet again.

Next, Joe Super spoke and mentioned some of the technical aspects regarding the very complex legal tangle that would ensue the moment the appeal was presented. The Catholic Church could not claim ownership of the land: the Franciscans never owned the territory their missions occupied but simply enjoyed their use. But the simple confirmation of the fact that this had been missionary ground would subject the area to a special legal status as a landmark site. That, however, would have to be dealt with by experts who could reconstruct accurately what in fact took place in that setting and determine its consequences accordingly. There were, all in all, weighty reasons for optimism. The hardest work was now done.

While Joe was bombarded with questions, I could hear Daniel's voice behind me.

“A quarter to one. Time to go.”

Chapter 44

“J
ust one moment.”

I scanned the surrounding people in search of Luis Zarate. Joe meanwhile kept answering questions and the students shook hands and hugged one another amid laughter while they started clearing up the campsite. The onlookers began to beat a retreat to their cars; the grandmothers insisted on handing out coffee that no one seemed to want anymore; and the police, although still overseeing things, no longer created a feeling of tension. Then I saw that a group of protesters had corralled the chairman a short distance away from this commotion of movement, shouts, and babbling voices.

“Can I steal him from you?”

Without waiting for an answer, I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him along with me.

“I want you to know that I always knew you'd come around sooner or later.”

“Don't think for a minute that I'd cower before Carter or that you'll end up convincing me,” he declared with an ironic smile.

I did not answer him; we both knew that the definitive reason he'd decided to step up was not because of Daniel or me but rather himself.

“Promise me that you're going to do this with enthusiasm and dedication.”

“And you promise me that you'll return someday. You'll be able to teach whatever course you like: Introduction to Franciscan Missions; Fontana and His Legacy 101; or How to Seduce a Chairman.”

I laughed wearily.

“Let me know when you come through Madrid. A few things are left up in the air; we can still remain friends.”

“Nothing has been left pending, Blanca. Everything has come to where it had to.”

I stopped walking and looked him in the eye.

“Fontana would be proud to know that everything is in good hands.”

I took the old cross from out of my raincoat pocket.

“Take this cross as a proof. It might be my imagination but I think Fontana found it buried around here. We've kept it with us these past few days; it has somehow been like having him close.”