Dark Vales

by Raimon Casellas

  EB

  Religious Procession 1912

  (Courtesy of the Municipal Archive, Figueró-Montmany)

  I

  Aleix the Truffle Man

  Where, in the black name of the Devil, could the rotten bones of that old muckworm have gone to rest?

  He was so damn doddering that folk believed he was over ninety, and there were those who would swear he was already well past a hundred. Some would even have wagered that his scraggy shoulders bore the weight of well over a hundred and fifteen or even a hundred and twenty years.

  Among the shepherds of the rugged gorges of Montmany wild rumour had it that the old wretch had already been buried once, but because he had dark powers and was in league with the Devil and was very, very rich, he had struggled tooth and nail, they said, and managed to re-emerge from down below.

  Once in a blue moon he would turn up at early Mass in the hilltop sanctuary of Puiggraciós, celebrated by a priest from another parish, and then everybody would look at him askance with a strange sort of malice where envy and perhaps even a certain admiration were combined.

  ‘Who would give two cents for that old blighter…’ would say a puzzled cowman.

  ‘And with that great stash of gold coins he must have, buried somewhere!’ added a woodsman, with a knowing look.

  ‘God blast him!’ everybody else barked greedily. ‘His coins ought to turn into scorpions!’

  But what is certain is that none of those curses and sideways glances had any effect at all on him.

  Hunched up with old age and with his head slumped, as if he was looking for needles on the ground, he shuffled clumsily by, pretending not to hear, confident in the two menacing great mastiffs with snarling fangs which, sniffing all around, went with him everywhere.

  Whether for fear of the dogs or for fear of the old curmudgeon, children would run away in panic at the first sight of them. It was enough to shout, ‘Watch out, here comes Aleix,’ and all the youngsters would dash away to huddle in their mothers’ skirts. Some of the older boys would approach him, if only to show off or to try to scrounge something from him:

  ‘Aleix… give us a bit of loose change, will you?’ one youth would say.

  ‘Nah… nah,’ was always the reply, grumbled darkly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘’Cos I’ve not got no money, me.’

  ‘Go on, you have so!’

  ‘Nay, nah…’

  ‘You do very nicely from your truffles…’

  ‘Truffles… I don’t go a-looking for them.’

  To dodge further questions and scrounging from the boys, the old man would quickly turn tail. Those denizens of the near-deserted ravines of Montmany were left gawping and awkwardly wondering. Ever since their local parish priest went away they had been left to their own dumb devices, except for the occasional Sunday when they were summoned to Mass by the bell of Puiggraciós. Meanwhile, old Aleix, with an unbelievable agility for his age, would be heading steeply down towards the Uià valley, crossing the Rovira pine woods, along under the edge of the Bertí crags, into the dense trees of the shady lower slopes until he reached the Ensulsida col. Then like a snake sliding into its lying place he sidled into the half-ruined farmhouse of Romaní.

  Those four cracked walls under a roof with more holes than tiles, like a star-embroidered sky, were his abode, his hiding place. At dawn every day, he used to set out from there heading towards the sun, to engage in the mysterious pursuit of his truffles.

  ‘The damned things know how to bury themselves away right enough… but I can yank them out, sure I can,’ he would mutter, twisting his frame and sniggering to himself.

  And, by Jeebers, well might he laugh, because in the many long years he had been scouring all the nooks and crannies deep in those craggy, dark ravines he had got to know alright where the god-damned truffles were to be found, all snugly tucked away underground… Damn and blast them! To avoid being seen they choose the most hidden spots, the most isolated barren patches, the grimmest bits of ground… and because they are such shifty, slovenly layabouts they look for places which stay dampish even though well aired by breezes and warmed by the midday sun… That’s why they seek shelter under trees with not too much cover, the hussies… to be able to lie around in the half-shade, with just enough sunlight and not too chilly…

  From a hundred yards away the old man could tell the chosen spots of the scented truffle; and whenever he went by a poplar, a holm oak or a walnut tree, he would cast a glance around the base of the trunk and would know instantly if there was anything there worth going for. The dogs went ahead of him, sniffing or yelping, as though trailing rabbits. The old man plodded on behind carrying a shoulder bag and a mattock in his hand. Hours and hours sometimes went by in this way… The dogs would be rooting about under brambles or under a poisonous sumac shrub, but as soon as he heard one of them bark, the old man would jump like a locust towards where the noise came from, and a glance was enough for him to size up the spot.

  Whenever he saw that the earth was swollen in a sort of mound, he poked at it with the handle of his mattock. If the ground sounded even slightly hollow, old Aleix would smirk with satisfaction as if saying to himself, ‘This is it!’ To be certain that he had hit the right spot, the only thing needed was to see the swarm of purple flies that would have been attracted by the scent of the truffle… Then he would kneel down and carefully dig away, gently lifting layers of soil… until the coveted prize appeared. One by one he collected the truffles; one by one he lovingly cleaned them; one by one he caressed them with the palm of his hand… And, having contemplated them for a while – so lovely and black, so polished, so very fine and pretty – he put them deftly into his bag.

  Then he made ready to go back to his lair… But before setting off, he would call his dogs, making sure that there was nobody to be seen round about… With his head close to the ground he listened for a while, and then from under the palms of both hands he scanned his surroundings… If it was all clear, he would head off at a shuffle towards his hiding place at Romaní. He had to be on the lookout, to keep a careful eye open, because those woodsmen of Ensulsida weren’t to be trusted! Not to mention the nasty shepherds out on the low meadows! The Devil take them all!

  That is why, when he arrived at the ruined farmstead, he could not resist sticking out his tongue to all those bloody rogues that envied his earnings. That is why he could never refrain from shaking an extended arm towards his neighbours’ houses in the deep valleys below, with fist clenched, muttering his curse:

  ‘Bugger the lot of you!’

  It could be said that Aleix represented eternal temptation throughout the whole district of Montmany. The twisted figure of the old scarecrow, night and day filled the thoughts of the wretched folk living in the scattered houses of those steep-sided dark vales. Especially in the evenings, when men and women seated around a poorly burning fire were bolting mouthfuls of stale brown bread or taking deliberate swigs of rough wine. They could not drive out of their minds thoughts of the old man at Romaní, with so much money stashed away in the ground there. Murky plans of robbery or murder ran like blood-spattered phantoms through their torpid imaginations. Drowsily and mutely they were pondering the sinister idea that would not go away. Yet hardly ever was a word about it muttered. Then, when the trance was at its deepest, a shepherd would suddenly say ‘I saw Aleix today’. And all would raise their heads, startled, as though waking up from a horrible obsessive nightmare upon suddenly hearing an echo of their own thoughts.

  ‘And… where did you see him?’ asked the farm owner, feigning indifference.

  ‘T’were below Sunyer’s terraces.’

  ‘He must have been going into the village…’ the farmer’s wife insinuated.

  ‘Or perhaps up to town…’ said somebody else.

  And once again there was a dreamy silence; they were all thinking about where he might have gone to, calculating the day of his return; imagining how much cash he would be bringing b
ack from the sale of the truffles which fetched such a good price in town… After so many years spying on him, night and day, one could say that they were familiar with his every move. Adults and children knew that once every month he would take to the road, humping his load of truffles; that on his way back he would stop in Figueró to buy food and drink, and that he would always return carrying mutton joints and fresh bread in the folded corner of his blanket.

  Not once but a hundred times, there had been someone who had thought of catching him unawares on the track and forcing him to hand over his money, or of firing off a shotgun at him, or of forcing him over the edge of the cliff… But these dark designs had never come to anything, because even the most unscrupulous plotters, when it came to taking real action, would feel a weird kind of fear when up against that mysterious man who, as the rumours went, had already been buried once and was in league with the Devil. And the terror inspired by the old man was the same as that felt by people about the ruined farm buildings at Romani. No one dared to go near there and, although the excuse was fear of the dogs, they were all in truth perturbed by the same thought: ‘God knows what there might be behind the wuthering darkness of those half-collapsed walls!’ When shepherds were within a stone’s throw of the ruins, the very most they would dare to do was to make the dogs bark by slinging a rock at the building, before rushing away downhill, making the sign of the cross and muttering ‘Jesus Christ!’ But then, one day, word went round that there had been no sight of Aleix anywhere in those parts. So many weeks had gone by and not a single soul had come across him, neither the shepherds with their flocks in the Brera woods nor the charcoal burners there working on the southern slopes. How or why he had disappeared was a complete mystery, but all of a sudden he was gone, as though the Devil had whisked him away. When the news began to spread through the ravines, passing quickly from one home to the next, a strange anxiety made the inhabitants’ hearts race. There was talk of nothing else in each and every household:

  ‘What might have happened?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s dead…’

  ‘Maybe he’s gone and left…’

  ‘We ought to go up there to see.’

  ‘There’s nothing else for it!’

  Even though none of them knew what the others were up to, members of all the scattered households were setting off towards the ruined farmstead, the men ruefully recalling the opportunities they had missed to settle their scores with the vile old fiend. One of them thought back to the day he had come across him high on the Bertí crags… and had not had the guts to push him over the edge. Another now regretted not having blasted off his shotgun at him that evening he caught sight of him down in the Rovira stream bed. ‘How stupid of me!’ they kept thinking to themselves. So strong were these persistent, upsetting thoughts that it was a struggle to hide them when they ran into other parties whose footsteps were guided by the same objective.

  ‘Where are you going?’ the question passed between them.

  ‘We’re heading for Romani… What about you?’

  ‘Same place.’

  ‘We’ve been thinking maybe the old man is ill… and wondering if we can do anything for him.’

  ‘That’s just what we said: “perhaps there’s something we can do to help…”’

  The first group to reach Romaní, having taken every kind of precaution, found the farmstead empty. No sign of the old man, no dogs, no furniture, nothing to see anywhere. On the floor only garbage and rubble; cobwebs all over the walls; strands of ivy covering the cracks and holes. Their hearts were sinking fast, when they noticed that the earth just outside the threshold had been disturbed… Greed it was that spurred them all to rush towards that spot. They scrabbled in the ground and there they found a cavity, and inside the cavity an earthen pot. They looked at each other distrustfully, with sidelong glances, all of them wanting to get their hands on the treasure… But one hand was quicker than the rest to take off the lid, and they all saw that the pot contained no sign of anything. Some of the men raised a fist, as though vaguely threatening the accursed memory of the old curmudgeon who was having this kind of laugh at their expense.

  ‘Six feet under is where he belongs!’ some said.

  ‘The Devil take him!’ muttered the others.

  Then, as they were going back down into their steep valleys, dejected and exhausted, cursing and swearing to themselves, to their ears there seemed to come a mocking voice from high up on the cliffs, saying:

  ‘Bugger the lot of you!’

  Some weeks, some months had gone by since then… until suddenly one day a shepherd from the Sunyers’ farm thought that he saw Aleix among the topmost holm oaks in the Brera woods. ‘Blast his eyes!’ the shepherd exclaimed under his breath. ‘Isn’t that the old geezer? On my life it is and all! It’s him alright!’ That evening he told the assembled inhabitants of the farm all about it, as they were sitting by the fireside, everyone with a plateful of coarsely mashed potatoes in front of them:

  ‘You wouldn’t ever believe it… But today, up in the high thickets in Brera, I reckon I saw Aleix…’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked old man Sunyer with an air of incredulity.

  ‘I am that!’ retorted the young lad.

  ‘Never! No way!’ chimed everybody else.

  Such was their repeated insistence on this that the shepherd eventually thought to himself ‘Maybe so, perhaps you did dream it…’

  But the strange thing was that, a few days later, the swineherd from Malaric also thought that he had spotted the old man near the top of the Puiggraciós ridge. And the day after that, not just one or two but a whole lot of people had sighted him in several different places.

  ‘Today I saw Aleix below Lledonell’s terraces,’ said Pau Boget to some shepherds who had met up above the Can Ripeta col.

  ‘Me too: I saw him today in the oaks at Rovira,’ replied one of their lads.

  ‘And so did I, near the Black Wood,’ said the shepherd from Can Prat.

  ‘And what time was it when you saw him?’

  ‘Me? It must have been at about a quarter to eight.’

  ‘Same here; it wasn’t yet eight o’clock.’

  ‘Well… that’s the same time that I came across him.’

  And because everyone had seen him at the same time in places so far away from each other, all those guardians of sheep and rams became very confused and worried, thinking about that devil of a man who had the marvellous gift of being able to appear at one extreme and another of the whole district, at precisely the very same time. And that anxiety among the shepherds soon spread again throughout the whole of Montmany. From then on, the bent and twisted figure of the old guy of Romaní became once again, night and day, their obsession: the ghost that haunted all those denizens of the tree-clad slopes.

  ‘A devil of a man! Devil!’ they would mutter deeply. ‘It seems there’s witchcraft afoot in all this.’

  Some thought that a miracle could be the explanation; others believed that dark forces were at work.

  ‘How can this ever be? To live longer than anybody else and to appear at the very same time in so many different places; for a man to melt away as if dead and then to turn up, just like that, slinking like a fox through valleys and over hills. How the flaming hell can this be, unless he has a pact with the wicked one?’

  And some of them would make the sign of the cross with their thumbs, as though to repel the evil presence, mumbling as they did so:

  ‘May God deliver us, may God protect us!’

  And some others crossed themselves shakily, exclaiming:

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’

  But, among all those strange and mysterious happenings, what perplexed them perhaps most of all was not being sure where Aleix sheltered after nightfall. Because everybody knew full well that he had not put his nose inside the tumbledown building at Romaní ever since the day he had seemed to melt away like a fine wisp of cloud.

  For some days already the ruined walls of that hidin
g place had been taken over by the local shepherds and woodcutters. It became a storage site for tools and for the animals’ nosebags, while sometimes they took the sheep inside to give them salt, so there was a constant coming and going of people in and out of the building.

  So, if that was not where he spent the nights… where in God’s name did the crafty old villain sleep? Certainly not in the open air, with the frosts and the downpours expected at that time of year. There was accommodation up at the sanctuary of Puiggraciós, but that was ruled out after someone had been to ask the couple who lived up there, and these wardens had said they had not seen him. The longer things continued like this, the deeper and shadier became the mystery of the old man’s life.

  Then it was that some of the locals said: ‘Just a second! What if the old sod has booked in at the church for his nightly rests?’ Their own parish church had been closed and completely abandoned for a long time, and now it served only as a roosting place for birds of prey which went in through the gaping windows. A strange idea, but perhaps true!

  They went to have a good look around the outside of the building, they hammered time and again on the door and they peered through its small grill… to no avail. They saw the big birds flying to and fro along the cornice under the eaves, and they saw them perching on the altar stone in the apse, going in and out through the window. But of Aleix the truffle man… neither hide nor hair.

  After all the times he had been regularly sighted, it was now quite the opposite and for days he had not been seen anywhere. ‘Where can he have got to, where must he be, where has he ended up?’ they all thought. Many had convinced themselves that he had simply melted away again, to reappear in due course… and then one Sunday suddenly he was sighted, high on the main ridge, heading towards Puiggraciós.