The Heart Has Its Reasons (34 page)

I was suddenly assailed by a momentary weakness and turned my head so as not to look him in the eyes. But I didn't regret what I'd just told him. Nor was I satisfied. Deep down, I didn't care one way or the other. I gained or lost nothing by cluing him in to my reality.

I gazed out the window without paying attention to anything in particular: neither to the sickly couple that had just walked into the
café, nor to an SUV that was parking, nor to a half-broken-down truck that was going into reverse, about to take off.

Then I noticed Daniel's arms cross the table in the direction of my plate. Two long arms with big bony hands at the ends. With them he grabbed my plate with my knife and fork and the rest of my breakfast and pulled it toward him. He cut, poked, put down the knife, and raised the fork toward my mouth. With a tone of professorial authority, which he most likely used when he had to bring his students in line, he said:

“
I
care. Eat.”

His reaction, which almost made me laugh, was compassionate, but had a hint of sharpness to it.

“Come on, let's go,” I said when I finally swallowed the piece of pancake that he offered me.

I went out while he paid. He didn't take long to catch up with me. As we headed to the car leisurely, immersed in our separate thoughts, I suddenly felt his fingers grazing the nape of my neck through my hair.

“Blanca, Blanca . . .”

He said nothing more.

Sonoma turned out to be a lot like Santa Cecilia, yet quieter without the noisy students. We parked on a downtown street, next to the large Sonoma Plaza containing the city hall and a good number of ancient trees. Scattered around it were low buildings in motley colors: the legendary Toscano Hotel and the Blue Wing Inn, the Sebastiani Theatre, the old Mexican army barracks, and La Casa Grande, the house of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo during the first years of independence.

“And here is our mission . . .”

At the far corner of the square, simple, white, and austere, with a veranda supported by old wooden beams that ran its entire length, was San Francisco Solano, commonly known as Mission Sonoma. The end of a chain established by the Spanish Franciscans in their heroic missionary zeal, it was the last outpost on the fabled Camino Real,
that open road over which friars in coarse leather sandals rode on the backs of mules. Like its sister missions, it had a cast-iron bell outside hanging from a crossbeam, a recurring symbol that dotted California from south to north, calling to mind those austere men who had settled there in a not-too-distant past.

We contemplated the mission in silence, standing still before it. Nothing extraordinary lay hidden behind its clean lines and simplicity. But in a certain way, and perhaps because of this, I think we were both moved. The clay tiles, the sun beating against the whitewash. A couple of minutes flew by.

“I wasn't altogether honest with you before.”

He didn't ask me to explain; he preferred that I just tell him. And I did so without looking at him, without taking my eyes off the mission's façade.

“It's true that at first I agreed to take on Fontana's legacy as a mere obligation to get away from my own problems, to distance myself from them physically and emotionally. But that doesn't mean that I've taken it lightly. What began as a simple duty has somehow become a personal interest.”

He didn't offer an opinion or judge; he merely waited a few moments, pondering my words. Then he grabbed me by the elbow and said, “Come on, let's go inside.”

As with the twenty other California missions, San Francisco Solano was not completely rebuilt and little of the original building was left standing. But the aesthetics were there, the soul and structure, with its humble wooden cross, rough on the top part. A metal plaque summarized its history, intimate and poignant in its sobriety.

There didn't seem to be any other visitors, and so, with no company other than the sound of our footsteps, we walked around the chapel with its whitewashed walls, clay-tiled floor, and modest altar. Afterwards, we visited the wing the priests had lived in, which had a tiny museum that showed a scale model of the original mission behind glass, a copper pot, cattle-branding irons, and a handful of black-and-white photos from different periods of the mission's existence.

In spite of the reduced size of the premises and the humility of its
contents, the place emanated charm and serenity. On the walls of what was thought to have been the refectory we came upon an ancient collection of watercolors and stopped to examine them. We admired fifty or so images of the missions, beautiful despite their varying states of decay before undergoing reconstruction: collapsed walls, roofs about to cave in or already in ruins, belfries propped up by scaffolding, partition walls with fissures, other walls devoured by vines, and overall a pervading sense of abandonment and loneliness.

“Do you think he was right?” Daniel asked, his eyes still fixed on the image of an arcade half in ruins, without taking his hands out of his pockets, without turning toward me.

“Who and about what?”

“Fontana, in believing that perhaps another mission existed whose traces aren't recorded anywhere.”

He kept looking ahead, motionless, as if behind the watercolors' brushstrokes he could find part of the answer.

“Among his papers, I haven't found any evidence,” I said. “But according to what you yourself told me, he believed there was. Mission Olvido was its name, right?”

“That's the name I heard him mention. Perhaps it was the real name, perhaps an imaginary one he chose to give it, to label something of which he never had proof.”

A pair of tourists came into the room. The woman had a camera at the ready, and the man was wearing a brightly colored fanny pack and a baseball cap facing backward. We moved aside to let them through, since the prints didn't seem to interest them.

“In any case,” I added when we were again left alone, “I'm afraid that there's still no trace of that lost mission.”

As we slowly left the watercolors behind and moved toward the interior garden, we heard children's voices. On stepping outside we realized that it was a school trip led by a young teacher and an elderly guide who asked for quiet with little success. We moved a safe distance away beside a central brick fountain, stopping to listen to what the guide finally managed to tell them: sanitized portions of history, digestible for an audience of fourth graders. Mention of the year of its founding,
1823; its founder, Father Jose Altimira; and the methods of work and teaching used on the Indian converts that were welcomed there.

We exited the mission in silence: Daniel, probably remembering the Andres Fontana he had known and those intuitions he had hardly paid any attention to at the time; I, still trying to reconstruct the professor from the testimonies he'd left behind. Two different versions of the same person: the man in Daniel's memory, and the intellectual legacy that remained.

When we left the mission and passed before the entrance's iron bell once again, Daniel halted. With his large hands he felt the thick wooden beams that held it and caressed their roughness. Then we walked instinctively toward the square and sat on a bench to savor the day's last rays of sunlight. Before us, between enormous trees, rose a bronze sculpture of a soldier with the old bear flag fluttering above his shoulder, an homage to California's ephemeral independence. Beyond it was a playground in absolute peace, with motionless swings and not a trace of children.

Despite my outburst that morning during breakfast, in a certain way I felt better after having told Daniel about myself. Unburdened, lighter, more at peace. Contrary to what I'd thought up until then, exposing my life to a stranger had turned out to be somewhat liberating. Perhaps because, in any case, I was growing stronger; or perhaps because that stranger was becoming less so by the day.

“Did you know that of all the missions, this one is for some reason the one Fontana showed most interest in?” I pointed out. “And its founder as well: Father Jose Altimira, whom the guide mentioned before when she told the story of the mission to the schoolchildren. He was a young Catalan Franciscan, recently settled in Alta California. I've found a few documents about him among Fontana's papers.”

“And what did he learn?” Daniel changed posture, turning toward me with interest.

“That Father Altimira managed to get authorization to build this last mission at the worst possible moment. Mission Dolores of San Francisco was then in a deplorable state and he proposed to move it here, but his superiors did not give him the go-ahead. Mexico had recently gained its independence from Spain and there was already
a feeling that it wouldn't be long before the missions were secularized. Meanwhile, the Franciscans refused to recognize any government other than their Spanish king. The governor of California, however, did accept Altimira's proposal, and thanks to him Altimira began its construction.”

“I imagine it wasn't because the governor was concerned with the souls of the infidels.”

“Of course not. He did so for a much more practical reason: to guarantee a stable presence in this area before the advancing Russians, who, in exchange for a couple of blankets, a few pairs of riding pants, and a handful of hoes, had gained from the Indians a great tract of land farther north, next to the Pacific.”

“Smart guys, those Russians from Fort Ross. Would you like to go see all that someday? Tomorrow, for instance?”

“Remember, I'm having dinner with Zarate.”

“Make up any old excuse and come with me again. You'll be way more bored with him.”

“Cut it out,” I said, half laughing. “Don't you want to know what happened to Altimira?”

“Of course I do. It was only a slight interruption. Carry on, I'm all ears.”

“Well, in spite of having civilian authorization, Altimira lacked his superiors' permission. Regardless, he did as he pleased; he chose this place, which at the time was totally inhospitable, and used several branches to fashion an altar, then stuck a wooden cross in the ground and established this mission.”

“A bit wayward, this Altimira, wasn't he?”

“Yes, quite rebellious, although in the end his superiors had to go along with him and allowed him to keep the mission active. Fontana found him a very interesting character. Among his papers one perceives a great effort to piece together Altimira's past beyond Sonoma.”

“Any luck?”

“So-so. Once he established his mission here in Sonoma against all odds, the newly converted Indians living in it rebelled. Apparently he was an efficient manager and a good administrator, but was unable
to establish an affectionate relationship with the natives. In his zeal to civilize them, it seems he was harsh and demanding, applying constant physical punishments and never winning over their trust.”

“So they revolted.”

“Exactly. Two or three years later, the Indians sacked the mission and set it on fire. Altimira and some neophytes escaped by a hairbreadth and fled.”

“And what became of him?”

“It's not too clear. Fontana seemed to be greatly interested in following in his footsteps, but I haven't come upon anything further on the matter.”

“Life in this mission must have come to an end then.”

“Quite the contrary. Shortly after the fire and Altimira's flight, another Franciscan took charge of it: Father Fortuni, an energetic old priest who quickly put things in order and fostered the necessary morale to rebuild the mission. However, he would eventually have to face something worse than fire or looting.”

“The secularization of the missions.”

“Exactly. A secularization that started out badly. At first, the new Mexican military representatives came all the way up here, to Alta California, with the intent of reconfiguring the social order. Then, overnight, conflicts began on various fronts: between the military and the Franciscans, the latter loyal unto death to the old Spanish order; and between the military and the local nonindigenous inhabitants, the old Californios, also of Spanish origin, who until then had lived peacefully, devoted to farming their lands and managing their haciendas.”

“And riding horseback, saying the rosary, singing, dancing and playing the guitar for their fandangos, which is what they called their parties in these parts. I'm not surprised they didn't identify with the idea of a republic, considering the good life they led under the Spanish monarchy . . .” Daniel remarked sarcastically.

“But they didn't have any other choice. Mexico had decided that the system of missions was an anachronism and immediately ordered the secularization of all of them and the distribution of the lands among the Hispanicized Indians and the new settlers who chose to
­establish themselves there. This too brought disputes, because there were some sly people who tried to get hold of these properties for nothing, and others, more reasonable, who thought the lands should revert to their original, legitimate owners.”

“Who I imagine were the Indians,” he suggested, “the native population.”

“Yes, in fact. Because, according to what I've read, the Franciscans never intended to become proprietors of the lands they settled, and even though to a large extent they failed in their attempt and often employed unfortunate practices, their sole objective was to bring the natives closer to their faith and try to transform them into citizens more or less integrated into their communities.”

We were still seated amid the trees in the square as the sun was setting, and only a few passersby diverted our attention from time to time.

“But they never achieved that . . .”

“No, because the grand plan to make the transfer was ultimately ignored and only a small percentage of the lands ended up being handed over to their rightful owners.”

“And the Indians, practically uprooted by force from their form of life and culture, ended up being, as is usually the case, the great losers of the story.”