I.
She was born in a small village on the side of a hill. Her grandmother said it was a good omen that she was born on a full moon, but of course, she was so young she couldn’t have known. The old ones always spoke like that, calling the moon good or bad, because the older ones had spoken like that when the cypress tress on the top of the hill by the cemetery where still young and green and full of hope. Now these evergreens stood tall, only occasionally giving up their green, turning brown and falling. The men would come with blunt axes and rope and haul the dead down the hill to the village were it would be cut up and used or possibly burned, like it had always been done. The old ones said the trees were a thousand years old because the older ones said they were nine hundred so it followed, but of course no one really knew. They would dig and sweat in the rocky soil until the dead was removed and then lowered with the ropes the newest dead into the fresh grave secretly hoping that the next wouldn't be them, or maybe so, before stamping a headstone with a date and solemn words. They lived close to death in the village on the side of a hill, with the moon always hanging above. It waned, and waxed again, of course, and returned back every time it needed to. From above, it watched the dust settle on the seasons and the crimson flowers bloom. It lighted the dark of young lovers in joy and the old sad nights of lost harvests. Below it, the years stretched and nearly snapped, until finally, she saw the moon full again. Her last son was being lowered into a hole beneath the cypress trees on top of the hill and she wept.
Her first son was taken in the civil war. He was eighteen and already marked by a darkness that only death could lighten. Some men are just born with it. He left the village when the marshal came and told the tales of adventure. She begged him to stay, he wouldn't, couldn't. He went to the front never to come back. His hat and boots arrived at the doorstep one day with the only consolation that it was brief, painless. Wrapped in the fold of his hat was a photograph, taken before he’d left. He was in uniform, beaming proudly, unaware of the atrocities that he’d soon see. He was just a kid.
Her second died of pneumonia. He was tiny, fragile and nearly as young as the lambs on the hill. One day he coughed and she knew it would take him. They had to sell his shoes to buy bread. They fetched a good loaf, being, as they were, unused. Then she only had one left.
Her husband was a watchmaker in the village on the side of the hill, but never saw great success. He was kind to her but the flame of desire burned lower as they aged and they settled into an eventual orbit, never touching each other. He retreated into his work, mastering the measurement of time, and by doing so, losing the ability to count on it. Waxing and waning, the moon kept count, the only standard above the seconds and minutes and hours and days and months and years. They remained faithful, stewards of tradition, heartbeats slowing to the tick tock tick tock tick tock. When she left the house for the last time the clocks had all stopped. Silence.
She had never before seen Jesus in the village on the side of the hill. Each time she tried, something always came up– a bad harvest, the birth of a child. He was always moving, laying between the mist settling on the valley floor above the creek in spring, or walking the path way up in the mountains over the hill with the cypress trees. When he wasn't needed he stayed in the barn by the road to town, touched by dust but not the moon, behind the cooper's barrels. The old ones said he hadn't been to the village in many years, maybe nine hundred, maybe a thousand. The older ones said never, or maybe so, no one could remember anyway. Her grandmother said that when she was born under the full moon that Jesus had come, but of course, she was so young she couldn't have known. He touched her and then she cried and was warm again. But now as she stood next to the fresh grave of her third son, the dust of spring wet with dew, sorrow eclipsed her and she could no longer wait. The cold of death was close. She wore everything she owned. It wasn’t much but it kept her warm regardless. Passing the barn on the road to town, she thought of him, but she moved on along the olive trees. The pilgrim’s path was long and arduous. She was tired when she finally arrived in the town over the mountains.
She didn’t care much for the parade, it was too loud. She followed the brigade, the canon thunder and the rifle shots in her ears, real or maybe not. She saw the infant asleep in the manger, sick with pneumonia or maybe not. Past the clocktower with four sides facing all the directions of her world, each a different time, each wrong and right. Vendors were selling lamb and palm branches brought from the sea far away. She stood beside the cathedral waiting. A somber mood hung between the pomp, seeping through the cracks of gaiety. She had been holding her breath for seventy years, for a glimpse, for a touch, another one or not. The clock tower cried out a time beneath the dusky moon. The seconds and minutes slowed until they almost didn't reach the street below with the pilgrim waiting wearing rosaries and scarves. Finally he arrived, carried on the shoulders of four men in procession. He was painted plaster on a wire frame, carried on a crude rick of cypress lumber, but he glowed. She was awestruck, immovable in his presence. The men continued, sons and fathers of the old ones and the older ones, past the cathedral for the nine hundredth or thousandth time. He was steps from her, she was warm again. Time struck like the clocks with the four different faces. He vanished into the darkness before her. It swallowed the men too. The world pulsed around her, but she was frozen in measured time, tick tock tick tock tick tock. The moon was full again that night.
