The Dig

“Write a story in which a character forms a connection with something unknown or forgotten.”

Today’s prompt reminded me of a feeling I have always had when I’m in or near a certain area in the casco vello or old part of Santiago de Compostela. The area spreads out from the Porta Santa on the opposite side of the cathedral, which is the Portico da Gloria that looks out over the large square known as the obradoiro. The smaller square I’m referring to is the Quintana dos Mortos. (I’ll probably not refer to the Quintana de Vivos, although it occupies the same rectangular area, just on a higher level.)

I’ve had the connection with the Quintana pretty much forever, from the moment I first visited. (How long ago doesn’t matter.) The attraction I felt was unusually vague, although sometimes I’ve felt things ranging from the lowest level of buzzing or vibration to being hurled against the walls of the cathedral, the Casa de la Parra, the Casa da Conga, and the Sampaio convent. Of being hurled sideways while simultaneously feeling my toes submerged in the stone floor. It is like being drawn and quartered, but not in a painful, violent way. Rather, I have felt stretched and fixed or anchored in the Quintana and it hardly has been painful. Rather, I have been drawn into the stones. Literally, absorbed by them, embraced, sung to, at times chided, and so much more.

The important thing, though, is the merging/emergence that creates immortality. That is where this story truly begins: in being, in occupying, a place so definitively that the only explanation is a call from something, located somewhere, yet either unknown (undefined, anonymous, foggy) or forgotten. In Santiago, though, even when things or people get blurry, they do not pass from memory. And so I work my way over the granite slabs, etching my thoughts onto them. Knowing they are writing my days for me.

Yet as I walk I become convinced there has to be more. I cannot accept the idea that such a space can remain unknown regarding the way it draws me to it and spreads me over it like a veil. I refuse to believe I am merely responding to a mysterious force or belief. That is absurd, childish, a bit mad. I know that in fact there is something concrete tugging at me, causing me to burst into tears at times, making me spin in circles like a child, but even a child wants answers and searches for them. I have found myself compelled to look until the nature of the connection became something I understood, not just lustful fantasy.

I have a theory that I’m trying to develop as I simultaneously sense my skin painlessly adhering to the walls as if some adept weaver were melding human into mineral. I retain my flexibility and elasticity even while absorbing or being absorbed by the stones. Something is translating me and I have decided not to resist that. I am aware that my lineage is in part Swabian and that the route from western Germanic lands to Gallaecia has every claim to being real. This theory allows me to hear something, thanks to Germanic links, that lies beneath and around the Cathedral.

Palimpsest, I hear as I come closer to the Porta Santa, the holy door that only opens in those years when July 25 falls on a Sunday. That makes no sense. On inspection, I detect a small slot or gap between the back wall of the cathedral next to the holy door and the paving of the Quintana. Something is asking for recognition. I look around, wondering if I should do something. I decide I should.

Imprecise data is the problem. I can’t keep all the details straight in my head, so the dates of discoveries of things from millennia ago do get confused, but I do know there were residents in the area before the Romans arrived. I also know about the Swabian stones that are tombs with only dusty air to honor now. I tug at the edge of the stone next to the cathedral wall and the stone moves upward without too much difficulty. I hear dates and the names of warriors or keys, but they all get muddled together.

Now Roman tombs tumble out, along with slabs from the sixteenth century and the next two hundred years. Bones are jumbled, and for some reason I’m reminded of Castelao’s Un ollo de vidro (A Glass Eye), which is set in a graveyard. Even knowing that the graves of the last layer were dug up and transferred to Bonaval and then to Boisaca or some place like it, I want to take the last group, which was treated with incredible reverence even though it was a hazard for local hygiene, and lay the burial site open for all to see. I also must include the earliest interments to ensure they too receive respect.

Collective contemporary knowledge and urban myths may not be up to the tasking of keeping the Quintana’s past relevant. There might be a subterranean passageway from the convent to the cathedral, but it didn’t have to be for ecclesiastical trysts. The myth of the pilgrim who apparently appears in shadow form likewise does not impress me. It seems so made up, for tourism benefit. I believe the biggest value is what lies below.

The solution regarding how to make others fully aware of the burning subterranean world of the Quintana dos Mortos is to create a sound and light show, projecting the deepest archaeological specimens onto the plaza stones. I can see it all now, and just think the show won’t really be for tourists, because those kinds are usually not interested in going through the area at night.

I rather like to think that my Germanic Swabians arrived around 500 A.D. and have been waiting for me to arrive twelve centuries later. It is their voices I hear in an indistinct agitation like the many tunnels that are no longer the veins of the city. They are voices that will nevertheless be heard. This project is still in the developmental stage and requires further investigation of all the layers, but meanwhile I continue with other things…

Here, still twirling about in sun, downpour, luscofusco, mist. Here, arms still raised in an astonishing lack of embarrassment. Here, grafting myself to every single vertical and horizontal stone, roots taking hold like in Gioconda Belli’s La mujer habitada. Novel about a Nicaraguan woman who eats an orange and is transferred, translated into a tree that bears the fruit.

I am a stone tree, unabashed and perhaps invisible, but happy in my own skin, solidly and ever alive in the square of the dead, the Quintana dos Mortos. All the dead I am bringing to life and that sustain me.

[Author’s note: This is a draft]