GLORIA SUNDAY THE BELLS OF SAN GREGORIO

I met Aunt Apolonia when she was quite old and bent over. At the end of Mass, she would stay behind, touring the images in the chapels of San Pedro Church, a spiritual tour that could last up to half an hour, sometimes three-quarters of an hour, and Father Don Frutos asked me to close the church. Since it's not my intention to distract her from her pious prayers to all the saints of the heavenly court who blessed her from their pedestals: Saint Isidore the Farmer, Our Lady of Fatima, the Risen Christ donated by my poor grandfather Benjamin when he apparently recovered from prostate cancer, Saint Gregory the Pope, Our Lady of Sorrows, and above all Saint Peter, installed on a throne on the main altar beneath the sublime face of the eternal father, who appeared between clouds of glitter, flaunting the armillary sphere or ringing the bunch of heavy keys as if they were bells... Come on, Aunt Apolonia, come on, that's it for today:

─I still have Saint Spyridon and Saint Rita, advocate of the impossible.

"Well, come on, they're going to give us the grapes, and you don't know Don Frutos. When he gets angry, he'll think I've been drinking his consecration wine or touching his brush."

That wait made me think of a tale passed around the lips of the daring and salacious during the winter rush hours. It was about a priest who had an affair with the blacksmith's wife. They communicated by ringing bells. A ring of seven claps meant that the field was clear and that the good priest could approach the smithy to court his lady. Two rings in a row meant no. That there were Moors on the coast. And one ring meant that the field was clear for him to have access to his mistress.

The ballad had pedigree and rigor, so that the rings became a musical composition. From the tower, the lover sent a message to his beloved in those days when there was no internet:

─Ladybug, my lady, come, it's time.

Lo and behold, the blacksmith intercepted the communication and deciphered its cryptic language. So one afternoon, while he was at the forge sharpening a red-hot grate, he ordered his wife to sit on the anvil. Feeling the pain of the hot iron on his bottom, he jumped up and reached the ceiling.

─Oh!

─Is it warm, huh? the blacksmith exclaimed, laughing.

At that moment, the call of love rang out from the tower. The priest was starting to get impatient. Bells rang:

─Lovely ladybug, come, it's time.

And from below, so that the whole town could hear him, his booming voice:

─His ass is burned, he can't do it now.

That is to say, the girl was turned on by the singing.

Some people want to be at Mass and ringing the bells. It can't be.

Then Aunt Polonia, the sister of Father Don Cirilo, approached me. Her eyes were very blue, her hair white, she had no teeth, and her whiteness resembled the cotton skein the women of Fuentesoto spun at the gate. She had a gentle smile and a wolfish hue at the corner of her lip where a thicket of black hair had grown.

"It's time to lock up. Let's go."

"Yes, son, yes. I have so many obligations, so many dead people that I can't keep up, so many people waiting for me there (she looked toward the cemetery on the hill), so many people who died that there are hundreds of Our Fathers in Requiem. Are you Antonio, Uncle Benjamín's grandson? The one who's going to be a priest?" "I am."

We went out to the entrance and at the church door, taking me by the hand, he said:

"Look up, Antoñito. Tell me what you see."

"The tower of San Gregorio, the bell tower without a bell. The French took them to melt them down and turn them into cannonballs. The youths no longer swing them, nor do they ring the cries for the dead, or call out when a fire breaks out."

"That's right, but I'm going to tell you about a miracle that happened on Easter Sunday. My brother, Don Cirilo Sanz, and I had come from Rome on a pilgrimage to see Pope Leo XIII. It was Holy Sunday. We all woke up startled because we heard the sound of the Gloria bell, which a very ancient king, King Alfonso VII the Emperor, had ordered blessed. The town was up then.

It was a ribab, or fortress, to defend us from the Saracens." That holy king had ordered the construction of a monastery cordon of 24, from Sacramenia to Osma and Berlanga de Duero.

The Muslims attacked and destroyed the village; the church was destroyed, but the bells continued to ring for Mass. And they rang alone.

"Don't tell me, Aunt Polonia."

"Yes, son, yes. It's true.

"There are witches, Aunt Apolonia," I said, somewhat skeptically.

When the French took them away, the clamor ceased to be heard throughout the surrounding area. My brother, who was very devoted to Saint Gregory, asked him that before he died, he would like to hear that sound. The Lord granted us that grace, and that Easter they rang to glory as they had never rang before. My brother said a Mass of thanksgiving and preached a sermon in which he said: