But let us return to my experiments. At first, these consisted solely of traveling and observing, although I was soon given to know that my unconscious intention was the attainment of the ideal map of Spain. Hoc erat in votis, such were my desires, as the immortal Horace says. Naturally, I had a magazine. I was, if I may say so, the funder and editor, the publisher and star poet. In petris, herbis vis est, sed maxima verbis: stones and grass have many virtues, but words have more.
My publication was tax-deductible too, which meant that it was little burden. But why bore you? Details have no place in poetry. That's always been my maxim, along with Paulo maiora canamus: let us sing of greater things, as Virgil says. One has to get to the marrow, the pith, the essence. I had a magazine and I headed a firm of lawyers, ambulance chasers and sharks, a firm of not undeserved renown, and during the summers I traveled. Life was good. And yet one day I said to myself, Xosé, you've been all over the world: incipit vita nova. It's time for you to tread the pathways of Spain, though you be no Dante, time for you to tread the roads of this country of ours, so battered and long-suffering and yet still so little known.
I'm a man of action. What's said is done: I bought myself a roulotte and off I went. Vive valeque. I traveled through Andalusia. Granada is so pretty, Seville so lovely, Cordoba so severe. But I needed to go deeper, get to the source. Doctor of law and criminal lawyer that I was, I couldn't rest until I'd found the right path: the ius est ars boni et aequi, the libertas est potestas faciendi id quod facere iure licet, the root of the apparition. It was a summer of initiation. I kept repeating to myself, after sweet Horace: nescit vox missa reverti, the word, once spoken, cannot be withdrawn. From the legal point of view, the statement has its loopholes. But not for a poet. By the time I returned from that first trip, I was in a state of excitement, and also somewhat confused.
Before long, I separated from my wife. There were no scenes and no one was hurt, since fortunately our daughters were already grown and had the sufficient discernment to understand me, especially the older one. Keep the apartment and the house in Tossa, I said, and let that be the end of it. My wife accepted, surprisingly enough. We put the rest in the hands of a few lawyers she trusted. In publicis nihil est lege gravius: in privatis firmissimum est testamentum. Although why I say that I don't know. What do wills have to do with divorce? My nightmares are getting the better of me. In any case, legum omnes servi sumus, ut liberi esse possimus, which means that in order to be free, which is our most precious desire, we are all slaves before the law.
Suddenly, I was overflowing with energy. I felt rejuvenated: I stopped smoking, I went running every morning, I participated diligently in three law conferences, two of them held in old European capitals. My magazine didn't go under; on the contrary, the poets who drew sustenance from my largesse closed ranks in manifest sympathy. Verae amicitiae sempieternae sunt, I thought, along with the learned Cicero. Then, in a clear instance of overconfidence, I decided to publish a book of my poetry. The printing was expensive and of the four reviews it received, all but one were negative. I blamed everything on Spain and my optimism and the unchanging laws of envy. Invidia ceu fulmine summa vaporant.
When summer came I got in the roulotte and set out to roam the lands of my elders, or in other words verdant, primeval Galicia. I left in good spirits, at four in the morning, muttering sonnets by the immortal and prickly Quevedo. Once in Galicia I traveled its rías and tried its mostos and talked to its sailors, since natura maxime miranda in minimis. Then I headed for the mountains, for the land of meigas, my soul fortified and my senses alert. I slept at campgrounds, because a Guardia Civil sergeant warned me that it was dangerous to camp along back roads or country highways, especially in the summer, because of lowlifes, traveling singers, and partygoers who wandered from one club to another along the foggy night roads. Qui amat periculum in illo peribit. The campgrounds weren't bad either, and I was soon calculating the wealth of emotions and passions that I might discover and observe and even catalog in such places, with an eye to my map.
So it was while I was at one of these establishments that what I now regard as the central part of my story took place. Or at least the only part that still preserves intact the happiness and mystery of my whole sad, futile tale. Mortalium nemo est felix, says Pliny. And also: felicitas cui praecipua fuerit homini, non est humani iudici. But to get to the point. I was at a campground, as I've said, near Castroverde, in the province of Lugo, in a mountainous spot abounding in thickets and shrubs of every sort. I was reading and taking notes and amassing knowledge. Otium sine litteris mors est et homini vivi sepultura. Although that may be an exaggeration. In short (and to be honest): I was dying of boredom.
One afternoon, as I was walking in an area that would doubtless be of interest to a paleontologist, the misfortune that I'm about to describe took place. I saw a group of campers coming down the mountain. From the looks of shock on their faces, one didn't need to be a genius to realize that something bad had happened. Gesturing for them to stop, I made them tell me their news. It turned out that the grandson of one of them had fallen down a shaft or pit or chasm up the mountain. My experience as a criminal lawyer told me that we had to act fast, facta, non verba, so while half the party continued on its way to the campground, I scaled the steep hill with the others and came to where they claimed the misfortune had occurred.
The chasm was deep, bottomless. One of the campers said that it was called Devil's Mouth. Another said that the locals claimed it was really the dwelling place of the devil or one of his earthly incarnations. I asked what the disappeared child's name was and one of the campers answered: Elifaz. The situation was already strange, but with his answer it became frankly ominous, because it isn't every day that a chasm swallows up a boy with such an unusual name. So it's Elifaz, is it? I said or whispered. That's his name, said the one who'd spoken. The others, uncultured office workers and government clerks from Lugo, looked at me and didn't say anything. I'm a man of thought and reflection, but I'm also a man of action. Non progredi est regredi, I remembered. So I went up to the rim of the chasm and shouted the boy's name. A menacing echo was the only answer I got: a shout, my shout, returned to me from the depths of the earth, turned into its blood-chilling echo. A shiver ran up my spine, but to hide it I think I laughed, telling my companions that the hole was certainly deep, and suggesting that if we tied all of our belts together we could create a makeshift rope so that one of us, the thinnest, of course, could go down and explore the first few feet of the pit. We conferred. We smoked. No one seconded my proposal. After a while, the people who had continued on to the campground returned with the first reinforcements and the necessary equipment to make the descent. Homo fervidus et diligens ad omnia est paratus, I thought.
We roped up a sturdy young man from Castroverde as well as we could, and with five strong men at the other end of the rope, he began his descent, equipped with a flashlight. He soon disappeared from sight. From above, we shouted: what can you see? and from the depths came his ever-fainter reply: nothing! Patientia vincit omnia, I advised, and we kept calling. We couldn't see anything, not even the light of the flashlight, although the walls of the cave closest to the surface were sporadically lit with a brief splash of light, as if the boy were pointing the flashlight over his head to check how many feet deep he was. It was then, as we were remarking on the light, that we heard a superhuman howl and we all moved to the edge of the shaft. What happened? we shouted. There was another howl. What happened? What did you see? Did you find him? No one answered from below. A few women started to pray. I wasn't sure whether to be appalled or to let myself be swept up in the phenomenon. Stultorum plena sunt omnia, as Cicero points out. A relative of our explorer asked us to haul him up. The five men who were holding the rope couldn't do it and we had to help them. The shout from down below was repeated several times. Finally, after tireless efforts, we managed to get him to the surface.