[T]he evening deepened with a hot green light as the town prepared for the coming procession… Slowly, to the sound of a drum and trumpet, the shuffling procession emerged, and the crush of spectators standing nearest the church fell to their knees as though they’d been sprayed with bullets. The dry beat of the drum and naked wail of the trumpet sounded as alien as I could wish, conjuring up in the glow of this semi-African twilight an extraordinary feeling of fear and magic. Was it the death of their saint they were so lugubriously celebrating with their black banners and dripping candles? Her image came riding high in the heart of the procession, a glittering figure of painted wood, bobbing her crowned head stiffly, left and right, to the kneeling crowds in the gutters. Her bearers sweated under their jewelled load, grunting patiently into their lacy shirt-fronts, while two lines of young women scuffled along behind, nasally chanting some tuneless dirge… Whoever she was, this prim painted mannikin dominated the town with an undeniable presence, and as she passed on her way she seemed to trail behind a gigantic swathe of absolution. Praise, thanks, and supplication followed her, passionately uttered by young and old. Clearly, to all eyes, she was the living Saint, Sister of the Virgin, Intimate of Christ, Eternal Mediator with the Ghost of God and Compassionate Mother of Toro. With a dying cry in the distance the image passed from sight, the drum and the trumpet faded, and the last of the girls shuffled by, their candles wilting and guttering, leaving behind in the street the spent faces of the peasants, a smell of wax, burnt wick, and exhaustion. << less