Chapter 5: The Door

The chapel stood at the back of the compound, a stone box with a tin cross on the roof and a bell nobody rang.

Garazi took me there on Wednesday, in the sleet, with a basket of candle stubs on her arm.

"My husband built it," she said.

"The year Ximun was born.

"He wanted a place where no one could hear him pray."

She lit a row of candles on a shelf under a plaster saint, and the light moved over her silver braid.

"My husband died owing no man a cent," she said.

"But a man owed him.

"A man gave his word on a Sunday, over lamb, and did not keep it.

"My husband said, it will be all right.

"It is only money.

"And then he died, and the money was the whole house."

She did not look at me.

"Ximun was thirty.

"There were forty cousins at the table, watching to see whether the new King was soft."

I sat on the pew.

"It was my father's word?" I said.

"It was a word from your side of the table.

"I won't say whose.

"I am an old woman and I might be wrong."

She turned to the saint.

"But you read the paper aloud, Iriondo.

"Nobody has made him do that.

"He thinks you are the first honest thing to walk through that door in six years, and he doesn't know where to put his hands."

She pinched out a wick.

"Now go and be kind to my son.

"Or not.

"He's a man.

"Either will do him good."

That night it sleeted harder.

I lay on the white iron bed with the green ledger open on my chest and the bolt shot, and I could not read.