Inside the city’s cathedral a tall, thin man with a prominent nose is hurrying towards the main door, dressed entirely in black, his ardent eyes focused on a distant horizon, his mind lost in unknown thoughts. See him? It is Emilio García—the man who will eventually marry Mónica Clemente—at this point a seminarian, though he will end his life as a humble bookseller in Seville.
It was Emilio’s knowledge of English that would bring him much of his renown in his later days and it was this knowledge that also provided the means for the fateful meeting between Mónica Clemente and himself inside the city’s great cathedral. It was here that Mónica came to say her daily prayers and it was here too that Emilio spent his mornings shepherding about the English tourists who had begun arriving in Andalucía in small numbers around this time.
Darkly dressed, sallow-skinned, large dark eyes peering out intently from beneath an unruly head of hair, the young man appeared almost cadaverous until he began to speak and then he seemed to suddenly ignite, as if a spark had entered his body and granted him the gift of life. “Venga, venga,” he would urge his charges, gathered dutifully by the Puerta de la Asunción. “Inside,” he would enthuse, “await paintings by Murillo, Valdés Leal, Jordaens and Zurbarán. But that, gentlemen, is not all—shrines decorated with amethysts and emeralds, gold in abundance, the precious stones of Cardinal Mendoza and silver work the likes of which you have never seen before.” And then he would wave them forward as if waiting inside that building were the keys to the heavens themselves, the enthusiasm in his voice increasing with every step until it reached a crescendo from where he would only slowly and reluctantly descend.
“Notice, if you will, the roof by Borja, señores,” he would point out to the tourists first. “A beauty, no? A marvel to behold.”
“Ah yes, indeed,” the tourists would respond, necks stretched awkwardly upwards trying to get a good look, their efforts interrupted abruptly by Emilio, who had already moved on to other more important things.
“And before you, the sculpture of Santa Veronica by Cornejo. Yes, splendid it is. I have no words to adequately describe such works. Magnificent, tremendous. Señores, you must admit that they simply fill the heart with awe.”
“So true,” the English would agree, shaking their heads, eyebrows arched in wonder as their young tour guide charged earnestly ahead.
Emilio, to all appearances oblivious to those who trudged faithfully behind him, would continue to point out the delights of the cathedral. “On your right, the Virgin with the Christ, St. John and the Magdalena, all by Pedro Roldán. And, my personal favourite—notice, please, the stupendous statues and Corinthian pillars designed by Juan de Arce. Magnificent, señores, outstanding beyond compare.”
The English would nod. Ah yes, ah no, of course and indeed, they would say, walking dutifully behind the young man who would saunter ahead as if fearing the great building itself was on the verge of disappearing into thin air and it was all they could do to catch this one final glimpse of it.
Later, alone in the cramped rooms of their pensiones, it was not the ostentatious delights of the cathedral the tourists would remember, but the enthusiastic young man who had been their guide: his passion, the quickness of his stride, his facility with English, which he spoke with such flourish and drama that it seemed in some ways a totally new language.
In the evenings too, alone in his dark room at the seminary, Emilio would pore over his books, trying with all his might to block out the gaiety of Seville. The sounds and the smells drifted into his room from the streets outside as people played, sang and declared their love for each other; because there, outside, were the sounds of life, he would tell himself and, thinking this, he would sink into despair at the sight of his narrow bed, the stained walls, the brass cross hanging over his desk and even his own pale hands turning the pages of a book by the dim candlelight.
On that particular evening, Emilio was reading the poetic works of Shelley, stumbling over the words but determined to get them right for if there was one thing that Emilio loved above all it was the sound of the English language.
English—yes, it seems strange indeed that a man who had been raised speaking the sonorous language of Lope de Vega and Cervantes felt such passion for the language he often accused of driving a person mad with its incomprehensible grammatical rules and its impossible pronunciation. But Emilio had been ensnared, seduced by English words, English cadences. Even more than the language, he loved the writers: Sir Walter Scott, above all, whose novels Emilio spent hours admiring, dictionary at the ready, or the heady outpourings of the English Romantics.
Inside the cathedral of Seville—not so much a building as a city in itself, with its staff of more than one hundred priests and sacristans, the comings and goings of peasants, tourists and nuns, the thirty Masses heard and the thirty yet to be heard in honour of Count this and estimado señor that, dead but nobly buried with seven priests and the most important families of Seville in attendance—Emilio would saunter along the hallowed aisles, savouring those English words as they rolled roughly from his tongue, all the while lamenting every moment that took him closer to a union with God.
It was his mother’s wish that he become a priest. “You were conceived with that in mind,” she had told him once. He had been born long after her other sons and shortly before the death of Emilio’s father—yet another sign, she had argued, that he was meant for God, that he had come into this world to guarantee his father’s passage from purgatory to heaven above and to ease the pain of her own life, a life she forever threatened was coming to an end, though the years passed and no end ever appeared imminent to those around her.
A tiny woman with a commanding voice, in her later years Emilio’s mother had taken to spending much of her free time inside the churches of Seville. This habit had made her something of an authority, not, as you would think, on the architecture of these beautiful buildings, but on the many sins of the prominent dead of the city, in whose names Masses were said, bells rung and souls siphoned from purgatory by the prayers of those below.
Hoy se sacan ánimas, the churches proclaimed. On this day souls will be set free. To those tourists who were puzzled by things Spanish, nothing seemed more ridiculous than the thought of the numerous Masses paid by a man not yet dead in order that he be assured a place up above.
“Simply barbarous,” the more critical would point out. “Proof indeed that Spain sits on the periphery of a distant century and that to Europe she surely does not belong.”
To Remedios, Emilio’s mother, these Masses were proof not of the barbarism of her compatriots but of another and more sinister truth, and that was this: only the rich ever secured a place for themselves in heaven. Those like her, who could not, had no choice but to find other means to ascend. It was in this spirit then that she offered up Emilio, for there was no greater reward, she knew, than the one saved for women who produced sons dedicated to the word of God.
Emilio had no desire to dedicate his life to God. Not even ten years old when his mother first informed him of her wish, he had determined from that moment on that his lot in life would be to escape, writhing and screaming if need be, from the stultifying clutches of the Church.
“Don’t despair just yet,” his friend Camilo would say to him years later when Emilio complained of his future as a priest in a city made for music, for gaiety—vamos hombre, let’s just come out and say it—a city made for love.
“For remember, amigo,” Camilo would