Enrique Centeno González
It was Holy Monday, and it wasn't.
The afternoon was consumed like all those of that week: heavy and melancholic. Silent, too. I think, with the gray and leaden sky, although perhaps the memory is only coloring the memories with the hopelessness of those days. And stuck in the body an irremediable cold, the insurmountable cold of fear and uncertainty. The ice of the Palace on the retina, and a bitter sadness hanging from all the looks and all the words
As in the rest of Cieza and the world, in the Barrio de Santa Clara, at the foot of the Hermitage, we had hardly gone out into the street for many days; only those strange trips to buy, with quick gestures and lowered heads, without a voice being heard, as if the usual neighbors had mutated into dangerous strangers.
It was Easter, and it was not.
The calendar insisted on marking the days of the Sacred Triduum, but it was not possible to imagine a more absolute opposite. Holy Week? Did those words, which evoke a thousand emotions, a thousand encounters and a thousand faces entwined in stories that we carry sewn to our entrails, fit into those days that repeated themselves, identical in their vacuity and irrelevance, indistinguishable in their solitary impotence? The family as a balm and as a shelter, and the responsible obligation to dress the conversations with some rag similar to hope. We should, yes, feel lucky, because not only fear but also misfortune had entered many homes. We said it, and we repeated it, but it was Holy Monday, and talking about fortune on a Holy Monday of deserted streets, with the brothers separated and scattered in the endless cells of an immense urban hive, was very difficult.
And in that shipwreck of all dear things, only one raft to cling to: music. When the time came, and we looked out on the balcony, the melodies of our processions descended on the town in perfect uniformity, like a brotherhood mesh that brought us together. Then we looked at the other, blurred in the distance; we recognized each other, and touched the yolks of our souls telling each other, without saying anything, that we missed each other. And then we would look up at the Hermitage, still illuminated with the mauve of Floración, and we would think of the Holy Christ, there in his dressing room. We could not pray: we only opened ourselves wide, and we let ourselves be read by those who do not need any words to know what lies in the hearts of the ciezanos
That afternoon, the successful initiative of the Junta de Hermandades Pasionarias had programmed “Caridad del Guadalquivir” for half past nine, the time in which the Stmo. Cristo de la Sangre must have been crossing the threshold of the Assumption to begin composing that interlude of solemn majesty that consists of his Via Crucis. Leaning out on the balcony of Calle Europa, in front of the open field, we saw how night took over everything, hovering over a last slightly orange line that could still be seen in the distance, outlining the Almorchón.
And the music began to sound from the powerful speakers of a nearby balcony, which had already earned, in the previous days, the informal right to take the initiative. The melody, simple and evocative like all those by Paco Lola, was drowning everything in nostalgia for Duarte, and Ibáñez, and the old town, and Easter. Dotting the night, lights here and there in living rooms and bedrooms, framed by neighbors leaning out, sometimes alone, sometimes entire families, sometimes hugs, and always in silence, all united with a truly brotherly emotion, despite the sadness.
Then, late in the march, right on the opposite façade, on the other side of the lot, a blind is heard quickly going up, and a shadow peeking out. The arms and the metal they carry are raised, and the notes of the trumpet solo begin to sprout from nowhere, as if there were a magical spring in that window that emanates music from the bowels of the Earth. All eyes converged there instantly, but the darkness in that corner was absolute: not a light, not a face, not a recognizable element. Only the sonorous beauty that was bewitching us all with the infinite elegance of a suspended time, and that musical caress on the wounds. Everything gathered and warmed at the foot of that brick wall: Easter vanished, fear for loved ones, discomfort before an unknown horizon full of threats... the load became lighter as the march from the curb of the mysterious instrumentalist.
The last note of the solo bled its final tear, and immediately, another fleeting movement and the blind lowered, like the gate of the Dormis behind the Sepulchre, while the march continued, already reduced to the artifacts that reproduced the recording. There was no signature, nor greeting in the tercio to collect the excited applause that thundered the neighborhood at the foot of the Holy Christ. Only emotion, tears, and the echo of a monumental and fleeting work of art remained, which sculpted in two minutes a perpetual memory. Little by little, each one returned to the shelter of the home, the night was calm and Easter 2020 resumed its melancholy.
I know nothing, a year later, about the musician who gave us that moment of absolute beauty. I have not investigated his identity, because there is no need. A name could be forgotten, what he did, never. But wherever he is, he will always have the gratitude of this family to whom he allowed the most moving, intense and authentic moment of those days of confinement.
Over time, I have learned that he was not the only ciezano who went out to give his music to the neighbors. In this same neighborhood of Santa Clara, and in so many corners of the town, other musicians wanted to raise the spirits of the cofrade family, as impromptu walkers of hope in a difficult time, sharing their passion and their art to alleviate so much sadness.
Easter 2020 arrived, and after twelve months we are still here, in a perpetual longing for procession and brotherhood, not knowing if it will be next year when we will finally recover what suddenly slipped through our fingers, when we already had it. we brushed The only certainty is that when everything returns, when Easter returns to declare the state of happiness in Cieza... it will do so with music.
