The Precise Measure of Wax

Clara does not look for the quill. She walks right past the municipal document that floats halfway over the dark mud of the floor, staining the edges of her skirt with the freezing water still welling up from the cesspool. She approaches the beam. She presses her right shoulder against the splintered head of the timber, just beneath Gael's hands, and pushes upward.

The weight is enormous. It smells of old moisture and fermented bark, as if they were holding up the skeleton of a ship grounded on dry land.

"Wedge it," she tells him through clenched teeth. "The iron one, the one by the bellows."

Gael slides half a span, blindly fumbling with his boot among the rubble and dragging the forged iron block to the foot of the prop. He hammers it in with a sharp blow of his heel. The wood groans, a dull creak rising up the limestone of the north wall, but the roof stops descending. The crack halts three fingers away from the doorway.

Outside, Anselmo's cane strikes the sheet metal of the gate once more, halfheartedly, as if the very iron of the street were growing tired of demanding.

"You have until San Bartolomé's rooster crows!" the hoarse voice shouts from the sidewalk. "Then the laborers will go in with the judge's order, Mendoza!"

Silence.

Then, the rustle of hurried footsteps fading down the street, splashing over the damp cobblestones of Vallehondo.

"His spurs are going to freeze," Gael murmurs.

He wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist. His knuckles are scraped raw and a smudge of soot crosses his left cheek from side to side.

"He's had rheumatism in his left knee since the winter of seventy-four," Clara says, letting out her breath slowly as she brushes off her palms. "He won't stay standing out there for more than half an hour."

The flame of the makeshift camp stove barely raises two spans of bluish light, fueled by scraps of resinous pine and dry pinecones they kept in the corner of the entryway. In a tin saucepan with a dented bottom, Clara melts a block of virgin beeswax they rescued from the sideboard. The wax boils slowly, releasing a dense, sweet vapor that immediately contends with the muddy smell of the well and that warm rumor of butter, toasted flour, and aged cinnamon still flowing, inexplicably, from the cracks of the sealed pantry.

The dripping on the kitchen flags grows regular, a hollow beat measuring the night like an unhinged clock.

"We have to plug the joint of the main frame," Gael says, holding an iron trowel. "If the fog gets through that fissure before the mortar sets, the beam will swell from the inside and split the wall like a walnut."

Clara grabs the saucepan by the charred wooden handle. She approaches the oak frame separating the kitchen from the entryway, lifting a tallow oil lamp with her other hand. The amber, turbid light, filtered by raw thread curtains eaten away by the old smoke of brazier and pipe tobacco, casts shadows that stretch against the whitewash like figures trying to escape the plaster.

As she brings the flame close to look for the crack on the side of the jamb, the grazing light reveals a series of small notches, cut with a pocketknife into the living wood.

They are parallel strokes, accompanied by clumsy numbers traced with hard graphite.

One meter twelve. One meter seventeen. One meter twenty-three.

"Look at this," she says.

Gael approaches, dragging a three-legged stool whose seat has a burn mark from a charcoal iron.

"The fever summer," he recalls, running the pad of his thumb over the lowest mark. "You insisted you'd grown four fingers in fifteen days. You'd climb up on a tile to fool Baltasar."

"I never climbed up on any tile."

"On a curved tile. One from the corral eaves. It still had the moss stuck to it."

Clara smiles faintly, a corner of her mouth lifting just a bit before tightening again. She pours a thick trickle of liquid wax along the fissure in the frame; the golden liquid runs hissing over the thirsty wood, sealing the pores with a minimal crackle, like dry leaves crushed beneath a wheel.

"Uncle Baltasar used to say beehive wax cures woodworm and memory," Gael murmurs. "He said it seals what shouldn't be opened until it's needed."

"Uncle Baltasar said a lot of nonsense when his gout acted up."

"Not that much."

Gael slips his hand into his vest pocket and pulls out the leather wallet. He slides onto the walnut table the envelope sealed with vermilion wax, whose circular imprint still retains the crude drawing of a tailor's thimble. The sandy touch of white lime dust shaken off the moldings covers the dark varnish of the table, edging the paper like a dry drizzle.

"You open it," he says. "It's not my place to break that seal."

Clara hesitates for a second. Her fingers linger over the dried wax, which is cold as an ancient coin kept at the bottom of a well. She doesn't tear the envelope. Instead, she slides it softly toward the center of the table, brushing the white dust aside with her sleeve.

"There's no need to open it to know what it says," she says, looking at the pencil marks on the frame. "Baltasar didn't leave money because he never had any. He left debts and this rotten timberwork to force us to face what we left behind."

Gael lowers his gaze to his own boots covered in dry mud.

"You left on the six o'clock stagecoach," he says, without reproach, like someone noting that the river runs murky in November. "You didn't even say goodbye to the sacristan."

"The stagecoach left at a quarter past six," she says. "And if I'd stayed, I would have died."

The phrase hangs suspended in the heavy air of the kitchen, floating alongside the scent of cinnamon and the wax hardening in the saucepan.

Gael nods slowly, just once. He doesn't answer. He gets up, grabs an old burlap rag, and begins mechanically wiping the lime covering the walnut tabletop, rubbing in slow circles, restoring a warm, oily sheen to the wood that had been buried under neglect for years.

Hours pass.

Night in Vallehondo does not pass: it settles. It is a sediment that crushes the roofs and soaks into the cracks, dampening the noises of the meadow until only the dull echo of water on the subterranean flags remains. Neither of them speaks again of Valladolid, nor of the seven empty winters, nor of the promissory notes Anselmo keeps in his cracked leather briefcase.

Toward five, the cold intensifies. Gael sits on the floor against the propped doorway, legs stretched out and head resting on the freshly sealed frame, snoring with a slow, broken breath.

Clara does not sleep. She remains standing by the blind window, watching the darkness of the entryway lose its ink-like density, transforming into a milky ash as the clarity of dawn begins to filter through the upper cracks.

Suddenly, a warm breeze sweeps through the hallway.

There is no gust of wind nor sudden jolt. With a dull click, the main bolt yields under the weight of the latch finally settling into the waxed wood. Outside, there is no trace of Anselmo, only the clear high road and the clean cold of the meadow pouring in through the crack of the ajar gate.

Clara looked at the road for a long while. Then she crouched beside Gael and squeezed his shoulder until he opened his eyes.

"Get up," she said. "We have to light the oven. If the old woman wanted bread made without hurry, she's going to get bread made without hurry."