The Sacred Beasts (21 page)

“This is awful!” Sylvie said. “Keep driving around. I want to know
if absolutely everyone has left.” They continued driving until the streets were
impassable. There was no sign of life anywhere. “Let’s go back to the
courtyard,” Sylvie said. “I can hardly believe this! I’ve never seen a ghost
town before.”

“There are plenty of them in Patagonia, actually, if you get far
enough away from the cities—not like this, of course. Wood structures decay
faster and the villages really are ghosts, barely discernable, vanishing in
front of you.” They parked in the courtyard; then Sylvie tried to enter what
seemed to be a former general store. Inside was black night; the windows were
boarded up and vague piles of detritus were scattered over the floor, from
which a putrid smell rose into the air. From the darkness and stench, a roaring
growl assailed them, and they could barely see a flash of wild eyes and the
outline of what seemed to be a big dog or a wolf with the carcass of a sizeable
animal.

“
Slowly
move out backwards,” Ruth said and they were in the
street immediately.

“What was that?” Sylvie asked. Ruth returned to the jeep and
brought back a baseball bat.

“Probably a wild dog with its kill,” Ruth said, “but I’m not
sure—it was too dark. Whatever it is, there’s food beside it, and it isn’t
likely to threaten us out here. But, I’ve got some protection anyway.”

“It’s so depressing! I want a drink.”

“That problem I can solve. We’re never without wine, but it may
not be cool.” She pointed to a tumbledown house with the still stable steps of
a porch. “Sit down there. I’ll get a bottle of wine.” She continued to carry the
baseball bat.

Then they sat and passed the wine bottle between them as the late
afternoon turned to sunset. The sounds of animal life around them grew louder,
and this they relished. Streaks of pink and orange cirrus clouds and a sliver
of moon appeared in the sky. “To me, it’s even beautiful like this,” Ruth said.
“We’re way out, adrift in nature. I’ve always loved that feeling, no matter how
bleak. I could never have studied Patagonia for so many years if I didn’t feel
it.”

“But I feel like this is the death of Spain, and we’re saying
goodbye.”

“It’s true in a way. One form of life is ending here and another
will begin.” Ruth thought. The Spain of the future might be greener and less
arid, with humans living in houses that can float on water. Still, the weather
everywhere will be pure chaos, and everyone will risk drought along with floods
and mudslides. It won’t really be safe anywhere, and money will no longer
insulate people as it once did. The rich will die along with the poor, though
the rich will be last to understand their folly. Damn, I can’t say any of this
to her.

And as suddenly and unexpectedly as any part of the wilds, she
appeared out of nowhere and came up to them, smiling—a woman at least in her
eighties, perhaps older. She was short and squat with wild, brilliantly white
hair. Her face was a mass of tanned and weathered wrinkles, though her features
were very regular and showed evidence of early beauty. Her smile was broad and
delighted, displaying just a few powerful, prominent teeth in her upper and
lower gums. Her dress was dark brown, diffuse and shapeless, with an apron that
was speckled and worn. Curiously, on her feet was a pair of tennis shoes.

“Oh . . . hello,” Sylvie began in confusion. “We didn’t know . .
.”

“We thought the village was deserted. We had no idea you were
living here. My name is Ruth Land,” Ruth said and offered her hand.

Sylvie did the same with a smile. “I am Sylvie Dumarais.”

The old woman smiled in delight as she took both of their hands in
hers, held them long, and squeezed them. Her face, swathed in the wrinkles of
her vast smile was all the lovelier, and the few teeth of her upper and lower
gums all the more powerful and square. Sylvie thought, I didn’t know I was
longing for you but I was, and I don’t know quite what you are. The old woman
gestured for them to follow her. Ruth and Sylvie looked at one another in
surprise and then did so, smiling.

They all walked along the decaying main thoroughfare of the town
at the slow, uneven gait of the old woman, whose joints were far from flexible.
The village, radiant in the sunset, seemed completely new to them; it was
now—uniquely and unexpectedly—a town of one inhabitant. “She can’t speak?”
Sylvie asked.

“She is clearly mute,” Ruth said. “Let’s not yet assume that she can’t
hear, however.” They continued to scrutinize the ruined village, now the color
and texture of old nuts, for signs of other people, but found no one. At the
end of the thoroughfare, the old woman gestured for them to follow her onto a
slender dirt path, which wound around a hill until they could see a hut above.
The sky behind it was crimson bordered in black.

“What are we getting ourselves into?” Sylvie whispered.

“I don’t sense any danger here. I’d watch an old man very
carefully, but there’s no safer bet than an old woman. Relax and enjoy a
completely unexpected experience that will never be repeated in your lifetime,”
Ruth said with a smile and thought, besides, I’m carrying a wine bottle in one
hand and a baseball bat in the other.

As they approached the woman’s home, they saw a structure
completely unlike the others. It was a primitive hut made of interwoven straw
and clay mud with perhaps a skeletal wood frame, as might be found in Africa or
in rural Europe of the middle ages. The woman again beckoned them in.

Reflecting the soft light of an old lantern, the interior was
evidence of a life so ancient as to be unrecognizable. All of her furnishings
seemed to be self-made with barely hewn boughs and sticks from a forest. Her
shelves were comprised of six wooden posts with four sticks connecting them,
sufficient to hold the few boxes and jars she stored there. All were made from
boughs or trunks of trees, now gray with age and cooking smoke. Only one jar
was contemporary, like the woman’s tennis shoes. She gestured toward three
chairs that were also self-made, with slender poles originally from trees and
heavy matted ropes for seats. Astonished, Ruth and Sylvie sat.

Ruth asked, “Are you alone here? There is no one else living in
the village?” The old woman nodded and smiled, and they realized that she was
merely mute and could hear and understand language. Then she smiled even more
deeply, with cascading wrinkles of pleasure, and opened both hands in a gesture
to both of them.

“And now we are three,” Sylvie said, creating words for her. The
old woman nodded her head and there, with the soft cinnabar light of sunset
gently touching the room, all three women felt delight in the rare, hidden
loveliness of the world. They could smell her dinner cooking on a stove
comprised of large tin cans on top of a small invisible central stove. Fire was
coming from within, and a primitive two-handled cauldron was bubbling.

Though words seemed unnecessary, Ruth said, “Thank you. We will
just eat a bit with you since we are not that hungry. But, you must let me
drive to the coast and replenish your groceries. The coast is only a few miles.
I insist.” The old woman nodded in a bow, then handed them their plates, which
were bent and made of thin metal like a miner’s gear. She ladled into them a
kind of brown stew with vegetables—onions, potatoes, and others they could not
identify. Her eating implements were bent and metallic also, possibly
self-made.

As Ruth and Sylvie tasted the stew, they noticed a surprisingly
sweet taste that also reflected the presence of nuts. They had never tasted
anything like it and found it very substantial and filling. Up to then, they
had said little, since speech seemed impolite when the old woman could not join
in. But now, they praised the uniqueness and tastiness of the stew. The old
woman gestured with an open hand to Sylvie and then to Ruth. “You made it for
us,” Ruth said, again translating. The old woman placed her hand over her heart
and nodded as they ate and smiled. This is intimacy and trust, Sylvie thought,
possibly the first I’ve felt with anyone in Spain, even in Europe, besides
Ruth. Ruth thought, she must have seen us from a distance and begun the meal
then. What an amazing creature. She is utterly one-of-a-kind.

The old woman now poured a liquid from a bottle into three clay
cups. As they drank, Ruth and Sylvie felt a fierce alcoholic kick from the
homemade beverage. Bootleg, of course, Ruth thought. “Strong and good,” she
said. Weird as hell, Sylvie thought, but I’m much safer here than in the
Spanish cities. I wonder what she ferments it from, Ruth thought. It could be
anything growing around here.

The old woman smiled her endlessly deeper and more resonant smile.
She gestured toward the two of them with open hands and then placed them over
her heart. “We are so happy to be with you, too,” Sylvie said.

“Yes,” Ruth added, “and to think we could have driven past without
finding you.” The old woman closed her eyes in pleasure and nodded, her hands
still over her heart. Ruth saw the inevitable hungry look come over Sylvie’s
face, but it was tempered with a tenderness she had not seen before. How could
Sylvie fail to paint this woman, perhaps the most amazing of them all? Ruth
thought. We could be in the Middle Ages, even further back.

How could I have left Spain without finding you? Sylvie thought.
You are everything hidden, secret, unexpected, hard-won and then found, in one
luminous moment, to be the foundation of all that is good. I love you dearly,
like a daughter. I have never seen a smile like yours. You are multitudes of
smiles, your wrinkled but wonderful skin holding them all like your rich
cauldron. Are you smiling somehow more deeply or is your face so weathered and
touched by nature that you show all the smiles of a lifetime? One painting must
solely be your marvelous face with the endlessness of your smile.

Another painting must show you over your stove. I will make the
stove larger with vague lines in the dark but splashes of fiery light,
something more like a primitive forge. You are utterly unique, the last of your
kind, the original life-giver, a creator. I feel that strongly in you: you are
one who gives life more than taking it, a forger-artisan of the world. What
sort of life have you led out here alone? You are unafraid, self-sustaining, at
ease. Where does that capacity come from? It is surely not modern—anything but
modern! No, you are timeless. There is so much I can learn from you! What are
the words for you? I will have to title you “The Old Woman of Spain,” and yet
even with that, with words, we will never know the how and why of you.

The woman began to refill their glasses, but Ruth raised her wine
bottle. “Please let me contribute. If you like it, I have a case with me and
would love to give it to you.” The old woman took the bottle and poured for
three. Then she gestured outside. “Yes, the wine with the sunset would be
lovely,” Sylvie said. The three women sat on the two steps of a porch in front
of the hut and together looked down at the desert below the hill. In the
distance was the highway, with vehicles still moving quickly to the coast,
another time dimension flying away from them, the sky now twilight, and still
the desert wind playing with anything that could move. The old woman held her
wine in one hand and took Sylvie’s hand in the other. Sylvie took Ruth’s hand
and there they sat, watching the world go dim but no less lively for that, and
there seemed to be so much of significance that words were unnecessary.

We are friends, wonderful and impossible friends, Ruth thought.
How often does that happen in this life?

When it was nearly dark, the old woman placed one hand over the
other to indicate that she intended to sleep. Of course, Ruth thought, she
rises in the dawn and sleeps in the dark, like a woman of the Neolithic. “We’ll
be just outside in sleeping bags,” Ruth said, “and we’ll leave tomorrow after I
drive to the coast and get groceries for you.” The old woman showed them an
outside water pump and a metal cup as well as a pond behind the hut that would serve,
however rustically, for their hygiene and other needs. When Ruth and Sylvie lay
together in their sleeping bags, looking up at the clear, black sky filled with
stars and the low, persistent sigh of a desert wind, Sylvie said, “I feel very
full, of what I’m not sure.”

“Intimacy, friendship, the unexpected,” Ruth offered.

“Spain, too.”

“It looks different now, doesn’t it?”

“Entirely. We’ve found something it hides, maybe its past or its
foundation or even another dimension. I’m not sure which,” Sylvie said, and
they slept.

In the morning, they decided that Ruth would drive to the coast
alone and Sylvie would take her charcoal and paper pad and stay behind with the
old woman. When Ruth returned, she was astonished to find them together,
surrounded by several dozen drawings, some by Sylvie and others in a very
different style. They greeted Ruth with jubilant laughter.

“She’s an artist!” Sylvie said exultantly, gesturing toward
several of the drawings. “These portraits are her two daughters, and more
drawings show her grandchildren. Some may be great-grandchildren.” Ruth looked
at them avidly. “The daughters and their children appeared to be living in a
sizeable house, and their clothing and surroundings looked contemporary, though
they shared some of the old woman’s features. One sketch displayed a very
beautiful girl with long, dark hair who probably resembled the old woman when
she was young, Ruth thought.