outside, the frigid air quickly silenced their warbling. A few snowflakes were falling, and the men turned up the collars of their overcoats, while the women clutched their dress skirts in one hand and used the other to keep their shawls from blowing away. The two boys straggled a bit behind, slowed by Robinsón’s limp. His orthopedic device made it difficult to find footing amid the snow and salt.
“Go on ahead with the rest, I know the way,” said the innkeeper’s son, proudly.
But Pablo did not leave his side until they reached the church. The crowd waiting outside was agitated, everyone having run out of small talk. A man with a cane and patent leather shoes was getting down from a carriage, followed by a woman wrapped in a mantle of Persian lambswool, while the panting horse tried to keep warm by urinating on the snow, creating a cloud of vapor like incense smoke. Seeing the elegant couple arrive, the beggars huddling around the parish door took their stiff hands from their pockets and begged for alms. Inside, the people thronged and the organist got ready to play the celestial notes of the Puer Natus Est Nobis. The sanctuary was dominated by a vague shadow favorable to contemplation, but also to dissolution, especially for those who had imbibed too many spirits with dinner. The twinkling light of the tapers could not penetrate the far corners of the church, and some congregants took advantage of this for some decidedly unecclesiastical necking. When the organ went tacit, the priest lifted his voice over the gathered faithful and, adjusting his embroidered chasuble, began to recite the Epistle of Saint Paul to Titus.
“Follow me,” someone whispered to Pablo, and he turned to see Robinsón disappearing into the shadows. He looked up at Julián to seek permission, but the inspector seemed to have fallen asleep listening to that velvety voice speaking of piety and hope. He made his way through the crowd and followed Robinsón to the retrochoir, where an altar boy was manning a little wooden door hidden in the shadows.
“Hi, Juan,” Robinsón whispered.
The altar boy nodded his head and looked around.
“I brought a friend,” he added, pointing to Pablo.
“That wasn’t part of our agreement,” said the altar boy with a gangster-like tone.
“I’ll give you double, if you want.”
“Alright then, enter,” and he opened the way for them, extending his hand surreptitiously.
Robinsón passed him an elongated packet, which immediately disappeared as if by magic, and signaled to Pablo to follow him. A few steep, narrow staircases led up to the organ. The priest recited the last few words of the Epistle, and the instrument roared to life again, startling the two boys.
Over here, Pablo read on his friend’s lips.
Two or three meters from the imposing organ, just behind the big man pumping the instrument’s bellows, there was a small gap in the balustrade. From there, hidden from the far-off eyes, the two boys could see out onto most of the church: in the pulpit, the chaplain was getting ready to read the Gospel of Saint Luke, while the parishioners, rich and poor, young and old, monarchist and liberal, were piled up on the benches, in the side aisles, and around the baptismal font, and the most fervid were squeezing together against the railings of the main altar.
“What did you give him?” Pablo asked, intrigued by the scheming.
“Who, Juan? Nothing, just a couple of my dad’s cigars. Look, do you see that man there, leaning on the confessional booth?”
Pablo turned his gaze in that direction and could make out, well-lit by a nearby taper, a man of about fifty years of age, repeatedly nodding off.
“That’s Don Agustino Rojas, my schoolmaster. I bet you anything he’s drunk. And do you see that woman in the first row kissing her prayer book? That’s the mayor’s sweetheart. He’s that guy over there, who keeps looking over at her whenever his wife isn’t watching …”
Pablo tried to discern in the crowd all of these people who Robinsón seemed to know like family, as silence fell and the priest started to read the passage on the birth of the baby Jesus:
“And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn …”
Pablo let his eyes wander around that sacred space commemorating a birth that had happened 1,899 years ago, and though the plumes of incense were indifferent to his nonfunctioning olfaction, a strange calm came over him. He fit his head between two balustrades, while Robinsón went on telling him stories, and his gaze fell on a girl wearing a festooned blue dress. He could not see her face because she was directly beneath them, but she captivated his attention. To her left, a man dressed in colonial style was holding her hand firmly.
“That’s Angela,” Robinsón whispered, seeing that Pablo could not take his eyes off of her. “She’s only been here in Béjar for a year. Her parents went to Cuba before she was born, and now they had to come back. They live just across from me.”
“And who is that man holding her hand?”
“That’s her father, Don Diego Gómez, Lieutenant Colonel of the Spanish army in the war overseas,” said Robinsón as if reciting from memory a refrain he had repeated a thousand times. “He was General Weyler’s right-hand man. Now he’s retired, but they say that he has fought three duels, and he lost a finger in one of them. That’s why he always wears gloves.
“And what happened to the others?” Pablo asked without taking his eyes off of Angela, perhaps thinking about the history of the unfortunate Évariste Galois, the intrepid mathematician whose story fascinated Pablo’s father.
“What others?”
“The ones who fought duels with him.”
“They’re all pushing up daisies.”
At that moment, a boy approached Angela and whispered something in her ear, but she appeared to ignore him.
“Who’s that?”
“That’s her idiot cousin. I’ve fought him seven times. His name is Rodrigo, Rodrigo Martín.”
“Wow, that’s my last name.”
“Yeah, it seems there are a lot of Martíns.”
“And did he come from Cuba too?”
“No, no. He was born in Béjar. His family was one of the richest in town, but his parents died when he was little.”
At that very moment, when the priest finished his reading and the organ came back to life, the girl in the blue dress, the daughter of Don Diego Gómez, without really knowing why, lifted her eyes upward, where they met the eyes of Pablo, the son of the provincial inspector. She stayed like that for a few seconds, with her mouth open and her neck craned uncomfortably, trying to figure out who the boy was looking at her from the bars of the balustrade. He too held there, paralyzed, unblinking, blushing in the darkness. And so they would have remained until the Nativity Mass or maybe even until New Year if Rodrigo Martín had not wanted to know what his cousin was looking at. Robinsón pulled back from the railing, dragging Pablo with him.
“Damn it,” he murmured. “If he saw us, we’re doomed.”
“Why?” Pablo asked, when he had recovered from the surprise.
Robinsón took a moment to respond, but his response was a double confession:
“Because I’ve fought him seven times and never won once. And because Rodrigo is in love with Angela.”
Pablo felt a strange constriction in his chest, as if he were suffocating. The organ music went on majestically, inundating the church with notes and many congregants’ eyes with tears. A few days later, the new year would arrive and, after it, the new century. The streets would fill with automobiles, the skies with airships, and the cities with cinematographs, while Pablo was filling his heart with love and dreams.