Chapter 13 The Liturgy of Gazes

CLAUDIA

The graduation hall of San Griselmo retains that solemn coldness of Romanesque churches. The fading, gray Madrid afternoon light filters through the high stained-glass windows, casting elongated shadows across the enormous U-shaped oak table where twelve of us are sitting.

To my left, two graduate classmates whisper as they review their notes.

At the center of the table, presiding over the seminar with her usual marble rigidity, is Dr. Mercedes Almeda.

She wears a pearl-gray tailored suit jacket and a white silk blouse buttoned to the very last button, where the gold cross stands out with an icy gleam.

Beside her, Dr. Clara Leguina takes notes in a leather notebook with the analytical expression of someone looking for a mistake in every single line.

My hands tremble beneath the table, but it isn't because of my thesis draft. It is because of her.

It has been three days since we signed our pact of mystical purity in her office.

Three days in which we have not touched, nor have we seen each other alone.

And yet, the distance has not extinguished the fire; it has concentrated it beneath a magnifying glass.

Every time Mercedes raises her eyes from the document in front of her, I feel a violent jolt in my stomach.

"Miss de la Vega, whenever you are ready," Clara Leguina announces, her voice screeching like chalk on a blackboard. "Present the conclusions of your theoretical reformulation. Let's see if you have managed to channel that... 'passionate drift' we discussed last week."

I swallow. I stand up slowly, adjusting my fine-knit sweater. I look at Mercedes. She keeps her face expressionless, but I notice how her fingers slightly tighten around the edge of her silver pen as our gazes cross.

"Good afternoon, everyone," I begin, forcing a firm academic tone.

"In this new submission, I have focused on the concept of spiritual union in mystical and classical thought.

I propose that the highest love is not the one consumed in the flesh, but the one sustained through conscious deprivation. A chosen asceticism."

As I utter the word asceticism, Mercedes’s gray eyes lock onto mine with an intensity so overwhelming that I almost forget how to breathe. She knows, with a certainty that burns my skin, that I am laying out the rules of our very own pact in front of the entire department.

MERCEDES

Hold your breath, Mercedes. Don't move. Don't blink.

I listen to Claudia’s voice modulate every single concept with a brilliance that dazzles and terrifies me in equal measure.

She is speaking of asceticism, of the spiritual marriage of the saints, of renouncing the body to save the soul.

.. and she is looking right at me. Her dark eyes, untainted by the hypocrisy permeating this room, search for me in every pause, in every intonation.

It is an invisible thread cutting across the graduation hall, pulling tight with immense force.

Beside me, Clara Leguina leans in toward me, shattering my concentration.

"My, Mercedes," she whispers into my ear, her breath smelling of stale mint. "Your student seems to have matured all at once since the trip to Salamanca. That approach to deprivation is very... devout. It almost seems as if you wrote it yourself."

I feel my blood freeze. I keep my eyes fixed straight ahead, forcing an icy smile of academic courtesy.

"Miss de la Vega is a brilliant student, Clara," I reply in the same whisper, trying to hide the tremor in my throat. "She has simply known how to assimilate the conceptual corrections from the chair."

Claudia keeps speaking, oblivious to our whispering.

She explains how the tension of not touching generates a space of absolute mutual understanding—a "liturgy of desire that purifies itself in distance.

" Her lips move with a hypnotic cadence.

I remember her taste, the warmth of her breath in my office, and suddenly the high collar of my silk blouse suffocates me.

"...therefore," Claudia concludes, closing her leather folder and holding my gaze with a boldness that disarms me, "purity is not the absence of love, but its ultimate elevation through voluntary distance. I am open to your questions."

A murmur of approval runs through the table. My graduate colleagues nod, impressed. Leguina takes the floor immediately, but I barely hear her; I am far too busy trying to keep my hands, crossed over the oak table, from visibly trembling.

"A brilliant presentation, de la Vega," Leguina says, narrowing her lizard eyes.

"However, I find a conceptual weakness in your proposal.

How is this 'voluntary asceticism' sustained in real life?

The flesh is weak; proximity is a trap. Do you truly believe two human beings can remain at that spiritual peak without falling into the physical mire if there is no actual geographical distance? "

Silence falls over the graduation hall. It is a theological question, but to us, it is a death sentence. I can feel Leguina watching us with a latent suspicion, waiting for one of us to falter.

I look at Claudia. She is pale, cornered by my colleague's inquisitive stare. It is my turn to act. I have to save her. I have to save us.

"If you will allow me to interject, Dr. Leguina," I say, and my chair professor voice cuts through the room's tension with the precision of a scalpel.

Clara turns toward me, arching an eyebrow.

"Miss de la Vega's approach is impeccable because it does not appeal to human strength, but rather to the will guided by the intellect.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux already proves this in his treatises on mystical love.

It is perfectly possible to share a space without profaning it, provided the rule of reason is stronger than the misery of the flesh. "

Claudia looks at me. Her eyes shine with a devotion so immense, so utterly exposed before everyone present, that my heart takes a wild leap.

"Exactly, Dr. Almeda," Claudia interjects, her voice trembling with a vibration so intimate that I fear Leguina might notice. "It is not about fleeing from the other person, but about learning to look at them with a respect that transcends the need to possess them."

CLAUDIA

The seminar ends half an hour later. The sound of wooden chairs scraping against the tiles shatters the spell of intimacy we had built. The professors stand up, talking among themselves, and my classmates begin packing away their laptops.

I linger behind for a moment, putting my papers into my leather folder with deliberately slow movements. I need the room to empty out. I need Mercedes to be left alone with me, even if it is just to exchange a formal word in this stone space.

Mercedes remains in her seat, organizing her seminar notes with that characteristic ritualistic slowness. Clara Leguina says goodbye to her with a condescending pat on the shoulder before exiting through the arched doorway.

Finally, we are left alone. The bells of the San Griselmo chapel begin to toll in the background, calling for evening prayer. The sound enters through the high windows like a reminder of the rigid world watching over us.

I take three steps toward the head of the table. I stop a meter away from her, scrupulously respecting the distance of our pact. My breathing is fast.

"Did I... did I defend the proposal well, Doctor?" I ask her in a whisper, searching for her gray eyes.

Mercedes stops arranging her papers. She looks up, and what I see in her pupils stirs me: there is an infinite exhaustion, a fierce battle of which I am the sole cause. She removes her reading glasses with trembling fingers and sets them down on the oak wood.

"You were impeccable, Claudia," she says, and her voice is not that of the chair professor; it is that of the woman who moans in the middle of the night. "But Dr. Leguina is right about something."

"About what?" I inquire, taking an involuntary half-step toward her, drawn by her magnetism.

"In that proximity is a trap," Mercedes whispers, narrowing her eyes as her gaze travels across my exposed face until it stops at my mouth.

"Seeing you standing there... hearing you speak of our secret with such brilliance in front of everyone.

.. it has been a torture I don't know if I will be able to endure for much longer. "

I feel the air in the room turn to liquid fire.

We are not touching, but the accumulated tension between us is so real that I can almost feel the brush of her skin against mine through the winter cold.

Our pact of purity is beautiful in theory, but here, beneath the echo of the San Griselmo bells, logic is beginning to weigh far too heavily.