The Sublime Door

The first time Tajo saw the royal palace, the entire group of mine workers came walking in a bundle of bodies tied together with ropes. They had spent months in the mines. They were completely unaware that there was a palace or a city in the vicinity. They had never made it out of the short run between the barracks and the elevators that descended into the iron veins. They did not understand anything that people said in the barracks. Under the threat of physical violence, they had only been able to learn what the instructions they received underground meant. They hadn't tried to talk to anyone because it wasn't allowed and they didn't feel any desire.

Actually Tajo confused the palace with the city walls. They were coming up the ditch of the road that led to the sublime gate from the mining valley. The blue sky and the red walls. Strong descents of iron columns embraced by sinuous limestone. The red door, tall and heavy, waiting for the third hour to open. Without clothes and without shoes under the scorching sun, up the dry slope to the esplanade in front of the door, where merchants, travelers and workers of all kinds were crowded.

When the third hour arrived, all the bells of the city began to ring. Huge iron bells, placed at ground level in all squares and street intersections, with very low frequency, insistently struck with large hammers. The swing of their clappers could very well kill a person. This rumor overflowed the city walls like a roar. Those who were queuing at the city gate were silent, as this was the announcement that they had to assert their documents and works. Nor was it possible to carry on a conversation under this blanket of sound. The doors must have made a noise when opened, too, because they were tall, heavy, and enormous. Twenty people in a line could pass through them simultaneously. But it was not possible to hear them under the ringing of the bells.

Every day Tajo had heard the roar of the third hour from the depths of the mine. From the depths of the earth the roar was not sound, but a soft vibration that seemed to come from somewhere behind the elevators, because its intensity varied in the different galleries. There was no roar, but the quality of the vibration was exactly the same as that of the chimes. The difference between the ore and the finished metal was felt as it appeared in certain objects that were placed at the entrances of the mines, the meaning of which Tajo did not know. The entrances to the mines were decorated with heavy, curved arcades that seemed to contain traces of some image of animals, plants, or things. They were actually representations of the same veins of metal underground. They gleamed and were carefully maintained by rigorous shifts. They seemed to be remnants or incipients of some cult. They were. But the mine workers did not have access to the cults, which were reserved for the foremen, and a great secret was kept about them.

The strong vibration of the bells in front of the red gates of the city transported Tajo back to Duga and the insistent coming and retreating of the sea with which they had grown up. There was a strange relationship between the sound of the sea and the vibrating of the sea of bells. Water and metal mixed in their body as in their memories. The dead fish on the shore, the foam brushing their knees on the cliffs, the mornings escaping from work in the beacon with Águda, the gentle sound of the waves at night behind the crackling of Marcela's bonfire. The bells also came and went jerkily, and the whole body became a shore and a liquid walk. They didn't know how much time had passed, but it couldn't have been more than two years, because they didn't feel like they had changed physically. Although they had not seen their image in all this time. They were suddenly seized with a panic that what seemed like two years was twenty, and that they had aged without knowing it. They made it a point to find a crystal or a well as soon as they entered the city. It was urgent to be able to see their reflection.