Obabakoak Read Free Page B

was so scared I was incapable of thought and I felt ashamed every time the canon said my name. I kept silent.
    “It means,” he began, “that the light we see today is the same light seen by our grandparents and our great-grandparents; it’s the same light our ancestors gazed upon. For hundreds of years, this house has united us all, those alive now and those who lived before us. That’s what the church is, Esteban, a community that transcends time.”
    This argument clearly took no account of the circumstances of my own life. The Church not only united, it also divided; the fact of my being there was but one example of that. I said nothing, however, to contradict the canon. In fact, I felt humbled, as if my exclusion from that community were a personal defect or stain. I broke out in a cold sweat.
    Smiling, the canon remarked that since there were still some minutes before the service was due to begin, I should take the opportunity to have a look at the altar and to visit other parts of the building. And, leaving me alone, he moved off toward a side door that led to the choir loft. I heard the rustle of his clothes even after he was out of sight.
    We tend to think that things are in themselves either big or small, failing to realize that what we call size is in fact always relative. They are only big or small in relation to other things and that is why I can still say now, in all honesty, that I have never again seen anyplace as big as the church at Obaba. It was a hundred times the size of the school, a thousand times bigger than my bedroom. What’s more, the shadows blurred the edges of walls and columns and made the bosses and the ribs of the vault seem even more remote. Everything seemed larger than it really was.
    One of the picture books I used to read at the time recounted the adventures of an expedition that had become trapped inside a hollow mountain and I associated the pictures in that book with the place I saw before me. Not only because of the obvious physical resemblance but also because of the asphyxia that was beginning to afflict me as it had the characters in the story. I continued on up the aisle but with the growing conviction that I would surely suffocate before I reached the flame burning on the altar. Then I noticed an old lady dressed in black approach the foot of the altar and lift a lever. Immediately the whole church was filled with light.
    That change from darkness to light made me feel better and I began to breathe more easily. With some relief I thought: It isn’t a hollow mountain, it’s more like a theater, like the ones my father used to go to in Hamburg, like the places where they put on operas.
    Most of my father’s memories revolved around the theater and I knew by heart the plots and choreography of everything he had seen at the opera house on Buschstrasse or at the Schauspielhaus, as well as many stories about the actors and actresses of the time. Comparisons between what I’d imagined in those conversations with my father and what I saw then seemed unavoidable. Yes, the church was a theater with a large central stage, images of bearded men, and seats and benches for the audience. And everything was golden, everything shone.
    A deep, almost tremulous sound ran through the whole church and when I turned my head toward the choir loft, I noticed some twenty women kneeling at their pews. They were moving their lips and staring at me.
    Oppressed by so many eyes, I ran toward the door the canon had entered and a moment later I was taking the stairs two by two up to where my companions would be waiting.
    Esteban Werfell laid his pen down wearily on the table and raised his eyes to the window, though without seeing anything in particular, without even noticing the din the swans by the lake were making. One of his “batty ideas” had just flitted across his mind, interrupting him, obliging him to consider the meaning of that twelfth notebook. What point was there in remembering?